The first artists, in any line, are doubtless not those whose general ideas about their art are most often on their lips⁠—those who most abound in precept, apology and formula and can best tell us the...

The first artists, in any line, are doubtless not those whose general ideas about their art are most often on their lips⁠—those who most abound in precept, apology and formula and can best tell us the...

He has produced a hundred short tales and only four regular novels; but if the tales deserve the first place in any candid appreciation of his talent it is not simply because they are so much the more...

One evening, about eight months ago, a friend of mine, Louis R., had invited together some college friends. We drank punch, and smoked, and talked about literature and art, telling amusing stories fro...

Doctor Heraclius Gloss was a very learned man. Although no book of any description written by him had ever appeared in the bookshops of the town, all the inhabitants of the erudite city of Balançon re...

Doctor Heraclius Gloss was a very learned man. Although no book of any description written by him had ever appeared in the bookshops of the town, all the inhabitants of the erudite city of Balançon re...

If it is true, as certain philosophers claim, that there is perfect harmony between the mental and the physical sides of a man and that one can read in the lines of the face the principal traits of a ...

As soon as the doctor was up, washed and shaved, and had partaken of a roll and butter dipped in a cup of chocolate flavoured with vanilla, he went down into his garden. Like all town gardens it was n...

When Doctor Heraclius returned home he was generally much fatter than when he went out, for each of his pockets⁠—and he had eighteen of them⁠—was stuffed with old books of a philosophical nature, whic...

One evening when the Dean, the Warden and the Doctor were together in the latter’s vast study, they had a most interesting discussion. “My friend,” said the Warden, “one ought to be an eclectic and an...

On the 17th March in the year of grace 17⁠—, the Doctor woke up in a feverish condition. During the night he had several times in his dreams seen a tall white man, dressed in patriarchal robes, who to...

By the time the doctor had finished reading this strange document, he was rigid with stupefaction. Then without any bargaining he bought it for the sum of twelve pounds and fivepence halfpenny, allowi...

Great as may be the joy of a shipwrecked man who has drifted for long days and nights lost on the ocean on a fragile raft, without mast or sail or compass and without hope, when he suddenly sights the...

Doctor Heraclius was very happy during the days following his surprising discovery. He lived in a state of downright jubilation, he was full of the glory of difficulties overcome, of mysteries unveile...

Nevertheless, Doctor Heraclius continued his series of discoveries without becoming discouraged. Henceforth every animal had a mysterious significance in his eyes. He ceased to see the beast itself in...

But the nearer he got to his house, the slower he walked, for a problem, very very much more difficult than that of philosophic truth, was disturbing his mind⁠—a problem which the unfortunate doctor f...

When began an exchange of significant glances between the two individuals who found themselves together, and each day for a whole week the Doctor passed long hours in conversing by means of his eyes (...

Some time after this memorable day heavy rain prevented Doctor Heraclius from going into his garden as was his custom, and he spent the whole morning in his study considering his monkey in a philosoph...

When lunch time came, the Doctor went into the dining room, sat down at the table, tucked his napkin into his coat, and set the precious manuscript open beside him. But as he was about to lift to his ...

On the evening of this unlucky day the Dean and the Warden came to talk for an hour or two with Heraclius in his study. The Doctor straightway told them of his embarrassing position and explained to t...

Just as a rich man can derive new pleasures and new satisfactions from his great fortune, so Doctor Heraclius, in possession of the inestimable manuscript, made surprising discoveries therein each tim...

A few days later readers of the Balançon Star noted with astonishment on the fourth page of the paper the following advertisement: Pythagoras⁠—Rome in 184⁠—memory recovered on the pedestal of a statue...

One night, being unable to sleep, the doctor got up between one and two in the morning to reread a passage that he thought he had not quite understood. He put on his slippers and opened the door of hi...

But just as the most beautiful summer days are sometimes abruptly spoilt by a fearful storm, so the Doctor’s happiness was suddenly marred by a most awful possibility. He had found the being for whom ...

When he opened his eyes it was seven o’clock, and Honorine was bathing his temples with vinegar. The Doctor’s first thought was for his monkey, but the animal had disappeared. “My monkey, where’s my m...

As the doctor had said, from that day onward the monkey was really master of the house, and Heraclius became the animal’s humble valet. He thought of him with infinite tenderness for hours at a time, ...

One morning the Doctor was woken up by an unusual noise. He jumped out of bed, dressed hurriedly and made for the kitchen, from which came extraordinary sounds of shouting and kicking. For a long time...

This time anger triumphed over respect; the doctor seized the monkey philosopher by the throat and dragged him howling into the study, where he administered the most terrible thrashing that the back o...

A visit from the dean and the Warden restored him. All three talked for an hour or two without mentioning metempsychosis; but when his two friends were leaving Heraclius could not contain himself any ...

From that day onwards Heraclius was filled with tremendous pride. In the same way that the Messiah sprang from God the Father, so he had sprung from Pythagoras⁠—or rather he himself was Pythagoras, fo...

Mdlle. Victoire, cook to the Dean of the Faculty of Balançon, Mademoiselle Gertrude, servant of the Warden of the said Faculty, and Mademoiselle Anastasie, housekeeper to the Abbé Beaufleury, Curé of ...

When Heraclius went out the following morning he noticed that everyone looked at him with curiosity as he passed and that people turned to glance twice at him. At first all this attention astonished h...

Two hours later a huge crowd of shouting people was jostling and pushing in front of the Doctor’s windows. Soon a shower of stones shattered the panes and the crowd was about to rush the doors when th...

Heraclius paused for a moment as he was leaving the fatal building and took a deep breath of the fine air of liberty. Then, with his brisk step of former days, he set off towards his house. After he h...

The next he went into the courtyard of the establishment and the first person he set eyes on was the author of the manuscript on metempsychosis. The two enemies looked each other up and down and then ...

Last summer I rented a country cottage on the banks of the Seine, several miles from Paris, and I used to go out to sleep there every night. After a while, I formed the acquaintance of one of my neigh...

He used to live in a little house near the main road at the entrance to a village. After he married the daughter of a farmer in the district he set up as a wheelwright, and as they both worked hard, t...

At the very beginning of the campaign Lieutenant Laré took two guns from the Prussians. The general said tersely: “Thanks, Lieutenant,” and gave him the cross of the Legion of Honour. Being as prudent...

Noon had just struck. The school-door opened and the youngsters streamed out tumbling over one another in their haste to get out quickly. But instead of promptly dispersing and going home to dinner as...

The Neuilly steam-tram had just passed the Porte Maillot, and was going along the broad avenue that terminates at the Seine. The small engine that was attached to the car whistled, to warn any obstacl...

For several days in succession straggling remnants of the routed army had passed through the town. They were not the regular army, but a disjointed rabble, the men unshaven and dirty, their uniforms i...

Monsieur Patissot, born in Paris, having failed in his studies at the Collège Henri IV, obtained employment in a government department through the influence of one of his aunts, who kept a cigar store...

Monsieur Patissot, born in Paris, having failed in his studies at the Collège Henri IV, obtained employment in a government department through the influence of one of his aunts, who kept a cigar store...

Monsieur Patissot worked listlessly during the whole week, dreaming of the outing he had planned for the following Sunday. He was seized with a sudden longing for the country, for green trees, and the...

During a whole week Patissot related his adventure to everyone that would listen to him, describing poeticaly the places he had visited, and growing indignant at the little enthusiasm he aroused among...

The day before he was to throw a bait into the river for the first time in his life, Monsieur Patissot bought for eighty centimes a pamphlet entitled, “The Perfect Fisherman.” Besides gleaning from it...

Monsieur Patissot had promised his friend, the boating man, that he would spend the following Sunday with him. An unforeseen circumstance interfered with his plans. He met one of his cousins whom he v...

The festival was approaching and the quiverings of it were already running through the streets, as ripples pass over the surface of the water when a storm is rising. The shops, adorned with flags, dis...

To recover from the fatigues of the celebration, Monsieur Patissot conceived the plan of passing the following Sunday tranquilly ensconced somewhere in communication with nature. Desiring a fine view,...

Many poets think that nature is not complete without woman, and from that idea, without doubt, came all the flowery comparisons in their songs, which make in turn of our natural companion a rose, a vi...

On the occasion of the national celebration, Monsieur Antoine Perdrix, head of Monsieur Patissot’s bureau, was made Chevalier of the Legion of Honor. He had been in the service thirty years under prec...

At each side of a door, above which, in staring letters, appeared the word “Ball,” large posters of a flaring red announced that on this Sunday this place of popular amusement would be devoted to anot...

Hardly a day goes by without our reading in some newspaper the following paragraph. “On Wednesday night the people living in No. 40 Rue de ⸻, were awakened by two shots in succession. They seemed to c...

The old-fashioned château was built on a wooded height. Tall trees surrounded it with dark greenery; and the vast park extended its vistas here over a deep forest and there over an open plain. Some li...

As the weather was very fine, the people on the farm had dined more speedily than usual, and had returned to the fields. The female servant, Rose, remained alone in the large kitchen, where the fire o...

Then a life of constant misery began for her. She worked mechanically, without thinking of what she was doing, with one fixed idea in her head: “Suppose people were to know.” This continual feeling ma...

The child was nearly eight months old, and she did not know it again. It had grown rosy and chubby all over like a little bundle of living fat. She threw herself on it as if it had been some prey, and...

She married him. She felt as if she were in a pit with inaccessible edges, from which she could never get out, and all kinds of misfortunes remained hanging over her head, like huge rocks, which would...

From that day forward, she had only one thought; to have a child, another child; she confided her wish to everybody, and in consequence of this, a neighbour told her of an infallible method. This was,...

For five months they had been talking of going to lunch at some country restaurant in the neighbourhood of Paris, on Madame Dufour’s birthday, and as they were looking forward very impatiently to the ...

When the first fine spring days come, and the earth awakes and assumes its garment of verdure, when the perfumed warmth of the air blows on our faces and fills our lungs, and even appears to penetrate...

The Restaurant Grillon, a small commonwealth of boatmen, was slowly emptying. In front of the door all was tumult⁠—cries and calls⁠—and huge fellows in white jerseys gesticulated with oars on their sh...

They used to go there every evening at about eleven o’clock, just as they went to the café. Six or eight of them used to meet there; they were always the same set, not fast men, but respectable citize...

They used to go there every evening at about eleven o’clock, just as they went to the café. Six or eight of them used to meet there; they were always the same set, not fast men, but respectable citize...

The fact is, Madame had a brother, who was a carpenter in their native place, Virville in the Department of Eure. When Madame had still kept the inn at Yvetot, she had stood godmother to that brother’...

They slept the peaceful sleep of a quiet conscience, until they got to Rouen, and when they returned to the house, refreshed and rested, Madame could not help saying: “It was all very well, but I was ...

Is there any stronger feeling than curiosity in a woman? Fancy seeing, knowing, touching what one has dreamed about! What would a woman not do for that? Once a woman’s eager curiosity is roused, she w...

I do not remember exactly what year it was. For a whole month I had been hunting with the concentrated, savage joy that one has in a new passion. I was in Normandy, at the house of a bachelor relative...

We will call her Madame Anserre though it was not her real name. She was one of those Parisian comets who leave a sort of trail of fire behind them. She wrote poetry and short stories, was sentimental...

It was a small drawing room, with thick hangings, and with a faint aromatic smell of scent in the air. A large fire was burning in the grate, and one lamp, covered with a shade of old lace, on the cor...

“Sunday, ⸻ “My dear, big Darling: “You do not write to me, I never see you, you never come. Have you ceased to love me? But why? What have I done? Pray tell me, my own dear love. I love you so much, s...

You ask me, my dear friend, to send you my impressions, and an account of my love affairs in this Africa to which I have so long been attracted. You laughed a great deal beforehand at my dusky sweethe...

High cliffs, perpendicular as a wall, skirt the seafront between Dieppe and Havre. In a depression in the cliffs, here and there, one sees a little narrow gulch with steep sides covered with short gra...

On a stifling afternoon during last summer, the large auction rooms seemed asleep, and the auctioneers were knocking down the various lots in a listless manner. In a back room, on the first floor, two...

Major, Count von Farlsberg, the Prussian commandant, had nearly finished reading his letters, lying back in a huge, tapestry-covered armchair, with his booted feet on the beautiful marble fireplace, w...

My dear Colette⁠—I do not know whether you remember a verse of M. Sainte-Beuve which we have read together, and which has remained fixed in my memory; for me this verse speaks eloquently; and it has v...

Why is the first sunshine so delightful? Why does the light falling upon the earth fill us so with the happiness of living? The sky is all blue, the country all green, the houses all white; and our ch...

The dinner was ended and the bachelors were sitting over their cigars and liqueurs, feeling comfortably quiescent as a result of good food and drink, when someone started a discussion of magnetism: Do...

This is the season for guillemots. From April until the end of May, before the bathers arrive from Paris, one may observe, at the little watering-place called Étretat, the sudden appearance of certain...

The two old friends were walking in the garden all in bloom, where life was stirred by the gay springtime. One was a senator and the other a member of the French Academy, grave, both of them, full of ...

Saint-Agnès, 6th May. My Dear Friend, You asked me to write to you often, and particularly to tell you what I had seen. You also asked me to search through my memories of travel and find some of those...

The road followed a gentle slope through the middle of the forest of Aïtone. Enormous pines spread out in an arch above our heads, making their sad, continuous, moaning complaint, while to our right a...

She had died painlessly, tranquilly, like a woman whose life was irreproachable, and she now lay on her back in bed, with closed eyes, calm features, her long white hair carefully arranged as if she h...

Five old friends had been dining together, an author, a doctor, and three wealthy bachelors of independent means. All available topics of conversation had been exhausted, and that feeling of weariness...

A gale was blowing out of doors; the autumn wind moaned and careered round the house, one of those winds which kill the last leaves and carry them off into the clouds. The shooting-party were finishin...

“I tell you, you will not believe it.” “Well, tell it anyhow.” “All right, here goes. But first I must tell you that my story is absolutely true in every respect; even if it does sound improbable. The...

You ask me to tell you about the most vivid recollections of my life. I am very old and have neither children nor relatives, and am therefore free to confide in you. Only promise that you will never r...

Madame Julie Roubère was expecting her elder sister, Madame Henriette Létoré, who was returning from Switzerland. The Létorés had been away about five weeks and Madame Henriette’s husband had gone bac...

Madame Berthe d’Avancelles up to that time had resisted all the prayers of her despairing admirer, Baron Joseph de Croissard. In Paris during the winter he had pursued her ardently, and now he was giv...

After dinner we were talking about an abortion which had recently been committed in the parish. The Baroness grew indignant: “How are such things possible! The girl, seduced by a butcher’s boy, had th...

The four glasses which were standing in front of the diners were still nearly half full, which is a sign, as a general rule, that the guests are quite so. They were beginning to speak without waiting ...

The procession came in sight in the hollow road shaded by the tall trees which grew on the slopes of the farm. The newly-married couple came first, then the relations, then the guests, and lastly the ...

My uncle Sosthène was a freethinker, like many others, a freethinker from sheer stupidity. People are very often religious for the same reason. The mere sight of a priest threw him into a violent rage...

The calm, glittering sea was scarcely stirred by the current of the tide. From the pier all Havre was watching the ships come in⁠—visible as they were from a great distance; some⁠—the big steamers⁠—wr...

Am I mad or jealous? I know not which, but I suffer horribly. I committed a crime, it is true, a mad crime, but are not insane jealousy, passionate love, betrayed and lost, and the terrible pain I end...

Madame de X to Madame de Z Étretat, Friday. My Dear Aunt, I am slowly making my way down to you. I shall be at Fresnes on the 2nd of September, in time for the opening of the hunting season, which I a...

It was during the hunting season, at the de Banville country seat. The autumn was rainy and dull. The red leaves, instead of crackling under foot, rotted in the hollows beneath the heavy showers. The ...

During his whole life, he had had only one insatiable passion, love of sport. He went out every day, from morning till night, with the greatest ardour, in summer and winter, spring and autumn, on the ...

It was at the end of the dinner opening the hunting season, at the house of Marquis de Bertrans. Eleven hunters, eight young women, and the doctor of the neighbourhood were seated around the large, we...

The old doctor and his young patient were talking by the side of the fire. There was nothing really the matter with her, except that she had one of those little feminine ailments from which pretty wom...

All the newspapers had carried the advertisement: The new watering place of Rondelis offers all desired advantages for a long stay and even for permanent residence. Its ferruginous waters, recognized ...

Counsel for the defence had pleaded insanity. How else was this strange crime to be accounted for? One morning, in the reeds near Chaton, two bodies had been found locked in each other’s arms, those o...

Madame LeFèvre was a country dame, a widow, one of these half peasants, who wear ribbons and bonnets with lots of trimming, one of those persons who clipped her words and put on great airs in public, ...

We had just left Rouen, and were going along the road to Jumièges at a brisk trot. The light carriage spun along between the fields, then the horse slowed down to climb the hill of Canteleu. At that p...

She had been brought up in one of those families who live shut up in themselves, and seem to be remote from everything. They pay no attention to political events, although they chat about them at tabl...

To the Abbé Louis d’Ennemare, at Soissons. My Dear Abbé: “My marriage with your cousin is broken off in the stupidest manner, on account of a stupid trick which I almost involuntarily played my intend...

The Abbé Marignan well deserved to be named after that famous battle. He was a tall, thin, fanatical priest, always in a state of exaltation, but never unjust. All his beliefs were fixed, and they nev...

We went on deck after dinner. There was not a ripple on the whole Mediterranean, whose smooth surface shone like silver under the great moon. The big steamer glided along, throwing up a curling column...

The two cottages stood side by side at the foot of a hill near a little seaside resort. The two peasants laboured hard on the fertile soil to rear their little ones, of whom each family had four. Befo...

It was a modest clerk’s household. The husband, who was employed in a Government office, was conventional and painstaking, and he always was very careful in the discharge of his duties. His name was L...

I knew that tall young fellow, René de Bourneval. He was an agreeable companion, though rather melancholy, and disillusioned about everything, very sceptical, with a scepticism which was direct and de...

This is what the old Marquis d’Arville told us after a dinner in honour of Saint-Hubert, at the house of Baron des Ravels. They had run down a stag that day. The Marquis was the only one of the guests...

My little darling: so you are crying from morning until night and from night until morning, because your husband leaves you; you do not know what to do and so you ask your old aunt for advice; you mus...

“Look here,” I said to Labarbe, “you have again repeated those words, ‘That pig, Morin.’ Why on earth do I never hear Morin’s name mentioned without his being called a pig?” Labarbe, who has since bec...

“Look here,” I said to Labarbe, “you have again repeated those words, ‘That pig, Morin.’ Why on earth do I never hear Morin’s name mentioned without his being called a pig?” Labarbe, who has since bec...

“At that time I was editor-in-chief of the Fanal des Charentes, and I used to meet Morin every day at the Café du Commerce. The day after his adventure he came to see me, as he did not know what to do...

“Dinner made me lose my head altogether. I sat beside her, and my hand continually met hers under the tablecloth, my foot touched hers, and our glances met and melted together. “After dinner we took a...

When I went into the waiting-room at the station at Loubain, the first thing I did was to look at the clock, and I found that I had two hours and ten minutes to wait for the Paris express. I felt sudd...

It was at the close of a dinner party consisting of men, married men, old friends, who sometimes met together without their wives, like bachelors, as in former days. They had eaten for a long while, a...

For forty years old Baron des Ravots had been the champion sportsman of his province. But a stroke of paralysis had kept him in his chair for the last five or six years. He could now only shoot pigeon...

That reminds me of a terrible story of the Franco-Prussian war (said Monsieur d’Endolin). You know my house in the faubourg de Cormeil. I was living there when the Prussians came, and I had for a neig...

“Women? “Well, what then? Women? “Well, there are no such schemers in the world for landing you into trouble on every opportunity, with or without a reason, often for the sole pleasure of playing you....

I had first seen it from Cancale, this fairy castle planted in the sea. I had seen it dimly, like a gray shadow rising in the foggy sky. I saw it again from Avranches at sunset. The immense stretch of...

Great misfortunes do not affect me very much, said Jean Bridelle, an old bachelor who passed for a sceptic. I have seen war at quite close quarters; I walked across corpses without any feeling of pity...

“The Comtesse Samoris.” “That lady in black over there?” “The very one. She’s wearing mourning for her daughter, whom she killed.” “Come now! You don’t mean that seriously?” “Oh! it is a very simple s...

Doctor Bonenfant was searching his memory, saying, half aloud: “A Christmas story⁠—some remembrance of Christmas?” Suddenly he cried: “Yes, I have one, and a strange one too; it is a fantastic story. ...

“Christmas Eve! Oh! no, I shall never celebrate that again!” Stout Henri Templier said that in a furious voice, as if someone had proposed some crime to him, while the others laughed and said: “What a...

“Madame Bonderoi?” “Yes, Madame Bonderoi.” “Impossible.” “I tell you it is.” “Madame Bonderoi, the old lady in a lace cap, the devout, the holy, the honourable Madame Bonderoi, whose little false curl...

The poor people lived miserably on the husband’s salary. Since their marriage two children had been born, and their previous lack of means had developed into that frightened, timid, shamefaced poverty...

The old priest was mumbling the last words of his sermon over the white caps of the peasant women, and the rough or greasy heads of the men. The large baskets of the farmers’ wives who had come from a...

Madame, do you recollect our great quarrel one evening in the little Japanese drawing room, about the father who committed incest? Do you recollect how indignant you were, the violent words you flung ...

He was dying rapidly, as people die who have tuberculosis. Every day I saw him sit down, at about two o’clock, under the hotel windows, facing the calm sea, on a bench on the terrace. For some time he...

Paris was blockaded, famished, at the last gasp. Sparrows were getting scarce on the roofs, and the sewers were depleted of their rats. People were eating anything. As he was strolling sadly along the...

The following lines recently appeared in the press: “Boulogne-sur-Mer, January 22. “From our correspondent. “A frightful disaster has occurred which throws into consternation our maritime population, ...

She was one of those pretty and charming girls born, as though fate had blundered over her, into a family of artisans. She had no marriage portion, no expectations, no means of getting known, understo...

During the three years that she had been married, she had not left the Val de Ciré, where her husband possessed two cotton-mills. She led a quiet life, and, although without children, she was quite ha...

The whole of this district was amazing, marked with a character of almost religious grandeur and sinister desolation. In the centre of a quiet ring of bare hills, where nothing grew but whins and a ra...

How often we hear people say, “That man is charming, but he is a woman, a regular girl.” They are alluding to the feminine men, the bane of our country. For all we men in France are feminine, that is,...

We were about to leave the asylum when I noticed in a corner of the courtyard a tall, thin man, obstinately going through the motions of calling an imaginary dog. He would call out, in sweet, tender t...

Monsieur Lantin having met the young woman at a soirée, at the home of the assistant of his department, had fallen head over ears in love with her. She was the daughter of a country tax collector who ...

He was called Saint Anthony, because his name was Anthony, and also, perhaps, because he was a good fellow, jovial, a lover of practical jokes, a tremendous eater and a heavy drinker and a great man f...

We were speaking of sequestration apropos of a recent lawsuit. It was at the close of an evening amongst friends, at an old house in the Rue de Grenelle, and each of us had a story to tell, a story al...

Since his entrance into France, with the army of the invasion, Walter Schnaffs judged himself the most unfortunate of men. He was stout, walked with difficulty, puffed much, and suffered frightfully w...

They called her Queen Hortense in Argenteuil. No one ever knew why. Perhaps because she spoke firmly, like an officer giving orders. Perhaps because she was large, bony, and imperious. Perhaps because...

The railway carriage was full as we left Cannes. We were chatting, for everybody was acquainted. As we passed Tarascon someone remarked: “Here’s the place where they assassinate people.” And we began ...

The railway carriage was full as we left Cannes. We were chatting, for everybody was acquainted. As we passed Tarascon someone remarked: “Here’s the place where they assassinate people.” And we began ...

The doctor was silent for a second, and then resumed: “One day, while I was receiving patients in my office, a tall young man entered. He said to me: “ ‘Doctor, I have come to ask you news of the Comt...

My brother and I were brought up by our uncle, the abbé Loisel⁠—the curé Loisel, as we called him. Our parents died when we were small, and he had taken us into his rectory and raised us. For eighteen...

For the past month the great sun had been casting its broiling heat over the fields. Nature is unfolding radiantly beneath this shower of fire; as far as the eye can reach, the earth is green. To the ...

Old Taille had three daughters: Anna, the eldest, who was scarcely ever mentioned in the family; Rose, the second girl, who was eighteen; and Clara, the youngest, who was a girl of fifteen. Old Taille...

After the civil formalities and the religious ceremony the wedding party went to Anna’s house. Among those whom the Tailles had brought was a cousin of a certain age, a M. Sauvetanin, a man given to p...

For a whole winter in Paris they had been great friends and after losing sight of each other, as is usual, on leaving college, they met again in society when they were both old and grey; the one a bac...

I was reminded of this horrible story and this horrible woman on the seafront the other day, as I stood watching⁠—at a watering-place much frequented by the wealthy⁠—a lady well known in Paris, a youn...

Mademoiselle Source had adopted the boy under very sad circumstances. At the time, she was thirty-six years old, and her deformity (when a little girl she had slipped from her nurse’s knee into the fi...

As Boniface the postman left the post office he discovered that his round that day would not take as long as usual, and felt a sharp pleasure in the knowledge. His task was the rural delivery outside ...

M. and Mme. Lerebour were the same age. But Monsieur seemed the younger, although he was the more infirm. They lived near Mantes in a pretty country place they had built, after making a fortune sellin...

Monsieur Marambot opened the letter which his servant Denis gave him and smiled. For twenty years Denis had been a servant in this house. He was a short, stout, jovial man, who was known throughout th...

My dear friend, you can hardly believe it? I can see why. You think I have gone mad? It may be so, but not for the reasons which you suppose. Yes, I am going to get married. That’s true. My ideas and ...

I made the acquaintance of Mme. de Jadelle at Paris this winter. She pleased me exceedingly at once. But you know her as well as I⁠ ⁠… no⁠ ⁠… pardon⁠ ⁠… almost as well as I.⁠ ⁠… You know her to be at ...

There was not a breath of air stirring; a heavy mist was lying over the river. It was like a layer of dull white cotton placed on the water. The banks themselves were indistinct, hidden behind strange...

The lawyer’s house looked on to the Square. Behind it, there was a nice, well-kept garden, extending to the Passage des Piques, which was almost always deserted, and from which it was separated by a w...

Château de Solles, Monday, July 30, 1883. My Dear Lucy: I have no news. We live in the drawing room, looking out at the rain. We cannot go out in this frightful weather, so we have theatricals. My dea...

The boulevard, that river of life, swarmed with people in the golden dust of the setting sun. The whole sky was a blinding red; and, behind the Madeleine, an immense blazing cloud flung along the grea...

A poor old man with white hair begged us for alms. My companion, Joseph Davranche, gave him five francs. Noticing my surprised look, he said: “That poor unfortunate reminds me of a story which I shall...

My dear Geneviève, you ask me to tell you about my honeymoon. How do you think I dare? Sly wretch that you are, never to tell me anything, upon my word, not even the least hint. Just think, you’ve bee...

No, my friend, do not think any more of it. What you ask of me revolts and disgusts me. It is as if God⁠—for I believe in God⁠—had wanted to spoil every good thing that He made by attaching some horri...

The war was over; the Germans were occupying France; the country lay quivering like a beaten wrestler fallen beneath the conqueror’s knee. From frenzied, famished, desperate Paris the first trains wer...

Monsieur Lemonnier had remained a widower with one child. He had loved his wife madly, with a noble and tender love, that never failed, throughout the whole of their life together. He was a good, hone...

The fat Justice of the Peace, with one eye closed and the other half-open, is listening with evident displeasure to the plaintiffs. Once in a while he gives a sort of grunt that foretells his opinion,...

“Do you know what ever became of Leremy?” “He is captain in the Sixth Dragoons.” “And Pinson?” “He’s a Subprefect.” “And Racollet?” “Dead.” We were trying to remember other names which would remind us...

Last Monday at Étretat the death occurred of an Indian prince, Bapu Sahib Khanderao Ghatgay, a relative of His Highness the Maharajah Gaikwar, Prince of Baroda, in the Province of Gujarath, Bombay Pre...

There were seven of us in the drag, four women and three men, one of whom was on the box seat beside the coachman. We were following, at a walking pace, the winding coast road up the hill. Having set ...

“At that time I was twenty-five years old, and I was daubing along the coast of Normandy. I call ‘daubing’ to wander about, with a knapsack on one’s back, from inn to inn, under the pretext of making ...

“We became acquainted in a rather singular manner. I had just finished a study which seemed to me rather striking. It must have been, for it was sold for ten thousand francs, fifteen years later. It w...

“It was indeed a singular revelation. “For some time I had commenced to work, as soon as daylight appeared, on a picture the subject of which was as follows: “A deep ravine, enclosed, surmounted by tw...

It happened to him one Sunday after Mass. He came out of church and was following the sunken road that led to his house, when he found himself behind Martin’s girl, who also was on her way home. The h...

Autumn is here! When I feel the first touch of winter I always think of my friend who lives down yonder on the Asiatic frontier. The last time I entered his house I knew that I should not see him agai...

After swearing for a long time that he would never marry, Jacques Bourdillère suddenly changed his mind. It happened one summer at the seaside, quite unexpectedly. One morning, as he was stretched on ...

Maître Saval, a notary, was considered an artist in Vernon, where he lived. He was passionately fond of music; though still young, he was bald, always carefully shaved, stoutish but not disagreeably s...

Yes. The memory of that evening will never fade. For half an hour I realised the sinister reality of implacable fate. I shuddered as a man shudders descending a mine. I plumbed the black depths of hum...

Paris had just learnt of the disaster of Sedan. The Republic was proclaimed. All France was panting at the outset of a delirium that lasted until after the Commune. Everybody was playing soldiers from...

Meetings constitute the charm of travelling. Who does not know the joy of coming, five hundred leagues from one’s native land, upon a man from Paris, a college friend, or a neighbour in the country? W...

Whenever Sabot came into the public-house of Martinville, a roar of laughter went up in anticipation. The fellow was as good as a play. He had no love for parsons, not he! He ate them alive. Sabot (Th...

Paolo Saverini’s widow lived alone with her son in a poor little house on the ramparts of Bonifacio. The town, built on a spur of the mountains, in places actually overhanging the sea, looks across a ...

Marguerite de Thèrelles was dying. Although she was only fifty-six, she looked at least seventy-five. She was gasping, paler than her sheets, shaken with frightful shudders, her face distorted, her ey...

A great fire blazed on the hearth. On the Japanese table two teacups faced each other, and the teapot steamed on one side, near a sugar-basin flanked by a decanter of rum. The Comte de Sallure threw h...

Monsieur Saval, who was called in Mantes “Father Saval,” had just got out of bed. He was weeping. It was a dull autumn day; the leaves were falling. They fell slowly in the rain, like a heavier and sl...

When M. Antoine Leuillet married the Widow Mathilde Souris, he had been in love with her for nearly ten years. M. Souris had been his friend, his old college chum. Leuillet was very fond of him, but f...

The men were talking in the smoking-room after dinner. They were talking about unexpected legacies and curious inheritances, when Monsieur Le Brument, whom they sometimes addressed as “illustrious Mas...

Some people are born with a predominant instinct, with some vocation or some desire aroused, from the very moment they begin to speak or to think. Ever since he was a child Monsieur Sacrement had only...

He was employed at the Ministry of Education, and as he lived in the Batignolles suburb he took the omnibus every morning in order to go to his office. And every morning he travelled to the centre of ...

Along all the roads around Goderville the peasants and their wives were coming toward the little town, for it was market day. The men were proceeding with slow steps, the whole body bent forward at ea...

Blérot had been my friend since childhood; we had no secrets from each other, and were united heart and soul by a brotherly intimacy and a boundless confidence in each other. He used to tell me his mo...

The promenade of La Croisette curves along the edge of the blue sea. To the right, where the Esterel juts out into the sea, the view is obstructed, and the horizon, with its charming southern outline ...

The little town of Étretat, curved like the crescent moon, with its white cliffs, white pebbly strand and blue sea, drowsed under the sun of a day in mid-July. At the two points of the crescent, the t...

We live in a period when practical jokers have the air of undertakers’ men and are generally known as politicians. We never see them now, your real practical joke, your really splendid rag, your happy...

A circle had been formed round Monsieur Bermutier, examining magistrate, who was giving his opinion on the mysterious Saint Cloud affair. For the past month all Paris had been wildly excited over this...

Why did I go into that beer hall on that particular evening? I do not know. It was cold; a fine rain, a flying mist, veiled the gas lamps with a transparent fog, made the sidewalks reflect the light t...

The warm autumn sunlight fell across the farmyard through the tall beeches at the roadside. Under the turf cropped by the cows, the earth was soft and moist with recent rain, and sank underfoot with a...

You ask me whether I am making fun of you, Madame? You cannot believe that a man has never been in love? All I can say is that I have never loved anyone! How did that happen? I really don’t know. I ha...

In front of the farm-gates the men were waiting in their Sunday clothes. The May sun shed its burning light on the flowering apple trees which roofed the whole farmyard with blossom in great round fra...

Throughout the neighbourhood the Lucases’ farm was known as the “Métairie,” no one could say why. The peasants no doubt connected this word “Métairie” with an idea of wealth and size, for the farm was...

My mistress at that time was a funny little woman. She was married, of course, for I’ve a perfect horror of unmarried women. After all, what pleasure can one have in possessing a woman who has the dou...

Society called him “Handsome Signoles.” His name was Viscount Gontran-Joseph de Signoles. An orphan, and possessed of an adequate income, he cut a dash, as the saying is. He had a good figure and a go...

The two young women look as though they were buried under a weight of flowers. They are alone in the huge landau, which is loaded with bouquets like a giant basket. Upon the front seat lie two white s...

Seven o’clock. A whistle blows; we are off. The train passes over the turnplates with the noise of stage thunder, then it plunges into the night, panting, puffing up its steam, throwing gleams of red ...

He would never have dared to hope that such good fortune would be his! The son of a provincial Sheriff, Jean Marin had come to Paris, like so many others, to study law in the Latin Quarter. In the var...

Madame Oreille was a very economical woman; she thoroughly knew the value of a halfpenny, and possessed a whole storehouse of strict principles with regard to the multiplication of money, so that her ...

The train had just left Genoa, in the direction of Marseilles, and was following the rocky and sinuous coast, gliding like an iron serpent between the sea and the mountains, creeping over the yellow s...

The defendants, Brument (Césaire-Isidore) and Cornu (Prosper-Napoléon), appeared at the Seine-Inférieure Assizes, charged with attempting the murder, by drowning, of the woman Brument, lawful wife of ...

I had not returned to Virelogne for fifteen years. I went back there to hunt in the autumn, staying with my friend Serval, who had finally rebuilt his château, which had been destroyed by the Prussian...

I had not returned to Virelogne for fifteen years. I went back there to hunt in the autumn, staying with my friend Serval, who had finally rebuilt his château, which had been destroyed by the Prussian...

“When war was declared, the younger Savage, who was then about thirty-three years old, enlisted, leaving his mother alone in the house. People did not pity the old woman very much, because they knew t...

He had known better days, in spite of his poverty and his infirmity. At the age of fifteen both his legs had been crushed by a carriage on the Varville high road. Ever since then he had been a beggar,...

It was all an accident, a pure accident. Tired of standing, Baron d’Étraille went⁠—as all the Princess’s rooms were open on that particular evening⁠—into an empty bedroom, which appeared almost dark a...

Although it was not yet ten o’clock, the employees were pouring in like waves through the great doorway of the Ministry of Marine, having come in haste from every corner of Paris, for the first of the...

Although it was not yet ten o’clock, the employees were pouring in like waves through the great doorway of the Ministry of Marine, having come in haste from every corner of Paris, for the first of the...

M. Cachelin lived in a small apartment on the fifth floor of a house at the upper end of the Rue Rochechouart. There was a balcony from which one could see all Paris, and three rooms, one for his sist...

The young people began housekeeping on the same floor with Cachelin and Mlle. Charlotte, in an apartment similar to theirs from which the tenant was expelled. A certain uneasiness, however, disturbed ...

After the burial of Aunt Charlotte, Lesable thought again of the million, and, tormented by a rage all the more violent because it must be kept secret, he hated all the world on account of his deplora...

But their hopes, always sustained, always renewed, ended in nothing. From month to month their expectations declined, in spite of the persistence of Lesable and the cooperation of his wife. They were ...

At the office the two men seemed to live on good enough terms. A sort of tacit pact was entered into between them to conceal from their colleagues their internal warfare. They addressed each other as ...

From the moment of this happy discovery, the three relatives lived in the most perfect accord. They were good-humoured, reasonable, and kind. Cachelin had recovered all his old gaiety, and Cora loaded...

Nothing of importance happened up to the date of Cora’s confinement, which occurred on the last day of September. The child, being a daughter, was called Désirée. As they wished to make the christenin...

It was teatime, just before the lamps were brought in. The villa overlooked the sea; the vanished sun had left the sky rose-tipped in its passing, and powdered with golden dust; and the Mediterranean,...

The two friends were finishing dinner. From the café window they saw the boulevard, covered with people. They felt the caress of the warm airs that drift through Paris on calm summer nights, making a ...

It was just after a male dinner-party. The evening had been hilarious. One of the guests, an old friend of mine, said to me: “Would you like to walk up the Avenue des Champ-Élysése?” So we set off, wa...

“At that time,” said George Kervelen, “I was living in furnished lodgings in the Rue des Saints-Pères. When my parents decided that I should go to Paris to continue my law studies, there had been a lo...

Maître Chicot, the innkeeper, who lived at Épreville, pulled up his tilbury in front of Mother Magloire’s farmhouse. He was a tall man of about forty, fat and with a red face, who was generally said t...

Admiral de la Valle, who seemed to be half asleep in his armchair, said in a voice which sounded like an old woman’s: “I had a very singular little love adventure once; would you like to hear it?” He ...

“I was thirty years of age and a first lieutenant in the navy, when I was entrusted with an astronomical expedition to Central India. The English Government provided me with all the necessary means fo...

“Two years had passed when the chance of my duties again called me to Bombay. Because I knew the country and the language well, I was left there to undertake another mission, by a sequence of unforese...

A northerly gale was blowing, sweeping across the sky vast wintry clouds, black and heavy, which in their passage flung furious showers of rain upon the earth. The raging sea roared and shook the coas...

A northerly gale was blowing, sweeping across the sky vast wintry clouds, black and heavy, which in their passage flung furious showers of rain upon the earth. The raging sea roared and shook the coas...

Jérémie advanced three steps, then wavered, thrust out his hands, found a wall to hold him upright, and went on again with tottering steps. Now and then a squall, rushing up the narrow street, hurled ...

The walls of the cell were bare and whitewashed. A narrow, barred window, so high that it could not easily be reached, lighted this bright, sinister little room; the madman, seated on a straw chair, l...

The warm night was closing in. The women had remained in the drawing room while the men sat smoking on the garden chairs in front of the door, round a table laden with cups and liqueur-glasses. Their ...

How many memories of my youth came to me under the gentle caress of the earliest summer sun! It is an age wherein all is good, glad, charming, and intoxicating. How exquisite are the memories of lost ...

When old Levas, bookkeeper in the service of Messrs. Labuze and Company, left the shop, he stood for some moments dazzled by the brilliance of the setting sun. All day long he had worked in the yellow...

“No,” said Pierre Jouvent, “I do not know Italy. I started to go there twice, but each time I was stopped at the frontier and could not manage to get any further. And yet my two attempts gave me charm...

“No,” said Pierre Jouvent, “I do not know Italy. I started to go there twice, but each time I was stopped at the frontier and could not manage to get any further. And yet my two attempts gave me charm...

“We took the express one Thursday evening on the 26th of June. Hardly anyone goes south at that time of the year, so that we had the carriage to ourselves. Both of us were in a bad temper on leaving P...

“The next year, at just about the same period, I was seized, just as one is with a periodical fever, with a new desire to go to Italy, and I immediately made up my mind to carry it into effect. There ...

“I’m an old man now,” said Colonel Laporte. “I’ve got the gout, and my legs are as stiff as the posts in a fence, but, damme, if a woman, a pretty woman, ordered me to go through the eye of a needle, ...

When Captain Épivent passed in the street all the ladies turned to look at him. He was the perfect type of a handsome hussar officer. He was always on parade, always strutted a little and seemed preoc...

The diners slowly entered the big hotel dining room and took their places. The waiters refrained from hurrying, so as to give the latecomers a chance, and avoid the trouble of handing the dishes round...

The noon sun poured fiercely down upon the fields. They stretched in undulating folds between the clumps of trees that marked each farmhouse; the different crops, ripe rye and yellowing wheat, pale-gr...

The train rushed through the shadows. I was alone, facing an old gentleman who was looking out of the window. There was a strong smell of disinfectant in this P.L.M. carriage, which must have come fro...

The sea is fretting the shore with small recurring waves. Small white clouds pass rapidly across the wide blue sky, swept along like birds by the swift wind; and the village, in a fold of a valley whi...

On the seventeenth of July, eighteen hundred and eighty-three, at half past two o’clock in the morning, the caretaker of Béziers cemetery, who lived in a little house at the end of the burying ground,...

When Captain Hector-Marie de Fontenne married Mlle. Laurine d’Estelle, parents and friends were of the opinion that it was a most unsuitable match. Mlle. Laurine, pretty, slender, fragile, fair and se...

“Really, dear, I think you must be mad to go for a walk in the country in this weather. For the last two months you’ve had the oddest ideas. You drag me willy-nilly to the seaside, though you never th...

As they left the Café Riche, Jean de Servigny said to Léon Saval: “We’ll walk, if you don’t mind walking. It’s too fine to take a cab.” “It will suit me perfectly,” answered his friend. “It’s barely e...

As they left the Café Riche, Jean de Servigny said to Léon Saval: “We’ll walk, if you don’t mind walking. It’s too fine to take a cab.” “It will suit me perfectly,” answered his friend. “It’s barely e...

The table had been laid on the veranda that overlooked the river. Villa Printemps, the house that the Marquise Obardi had taken, stood halfway up the hillside, at the very point where just below the g...

Nor could Yvette sleep. Like her mother, she sat at the open window, resting her elbows on the sill, and tears, her first bitter tears, filled her eyes. Till now she had lived and grown up in the heed...

Next morning Yvette went off alone to sit in the place where Servigny had read over the history of the ants. “I will not leave it,” she said to herself, “until I have come to a decision.” The river ra...

When I was told: “You know that Jacques Parent has died mad in the asylum,” a painful shiver, a shiver of fear and anguish, ran through my frame; and suddenly I saw him again, the tall, queer fellow, ...

The boat was crowded with people. The crossing promised to be calm, and the Havre people were going to make an excursion to Trouville. The ropes were cast off; a final shriek from the whistle announce...

No one was surprised at the marriage of Maître Simon Lebrument and Mlle. Jeanne Cordier. Maître Lebrument had just bought the practice of Maître Papillon, the notary; he needed money, of course, with ...

“Shall we have our coffee on the roof?” asked the captain. “Yes, by all means,” I replied. He rose. It was already dark in the room, lighted only by the inner courtyard, as is the custom in Moorish ho...

Monsieur and Madame Serbois were lunching, sitting opposite each other. Both looked gloomy. She, a little blonde with rosy skin and blue eyes and a gentle manner, was eating slowly without raising her...

After dinner we were recounting shooting adventures and accidents. An old friend of ours, Monsieur Boniface, a great slayer of beasts and drinker of wine, a strong and debonair fellow, full of wit, se...

My old friend⁠—sometimes one has friends much older than oneself⁠—my old friend Doctor Bonnet had often invited me to stay with him at his house at Riom. I did not know Auvergne at all, and I decided ...

Life often seemed very hard to Simon Bombard! He was born with an incredible capacity for doing nothing and with an immoderate desire to follow this vocation. All effort, whether moral or physical, ev...

The entire population of Véziers-le-Réthel had followed Monsieur Badon-Leremincé to his grave; in every memory lingered still the last words of the prefect’s funeral oration: “At least he was a man of...

M. de Garelle, alone, lying back in an armchair. Here I am at Cannes, a gay bachelor, which is humorous enough. I’m a bachelor. At Paris I hardly realised it. Away from home, it’s another thing. Upon ...

M. de Garelle, alone, lying back in an armchair. Here I am at Cannes, a gay bachelor, which is humorous enough. I’m a bachelor. At Paris I hardly realised it. Away from home, it’s another thing. Upon ...

M. de Garelle: Will you allow me, madame, to recall myself to your memory? M. de Garelle: You have nothing to fear, madame. I am not your husband now. Mme. de Chantever: Oh, you dare! After⁠ ⁠… after ...

The courthouse of the Gorgeville justice of the peace is full of country folk, seated impassively round the walls, awaiting the opening of the court. Among them are large and small, ruddy fat fellows ...

“What! You do not know why President Amandon was transferred?” “No, not at all.” “As far as that is concerned, neither did he ever know it. But it is a story of the strangest sort.” “Tell it to me.” “...

After dinner we were talking about women, for what else is there to talk about, among men? One of us said: “By the way, I had a curious adventure of that kind.” And this is what he told us: “One eveni...

There was no noise in the forest except the light trembling of the snow falling upon the trees. It had fallen since midday: a soft, fine snow which powdered the branches with a glittering moss and thr...

To set out on foot, when the sun is just rising, and walk through the dew, by the side of the fields, at the verge of the quiet sea, what ecstasy! What ecstasy! It enters in through the eyes with the ...

Everybody for ten leagues round knew old ’Toine, “Big ’Toine,” ’Toine-Ma-Fine, Antoine Mâcheblé, also nicknamed Brulot⁠—the tavern-keeper of Tournevent. He had given celebrity to that little hamlet, h...

Everybody for ten leagues round knew old ’Toine, “Big ’Toine,” ’Toine-Ma-Fine, Antoine Mâcheblé, also nicknamed Brulot⁠—the tavern-keeper of Tournevent. He had given celebrity to that little hamlet, h...

Well, it came to pass that ’Toine got a paralytic stroke. They put the colossus to bed in the little chamber behind the partition of the barroom⁠—so that he could hear what the folks were saying on th...

’Toine was vanquished. He had to hatch; he had to give up playing dominoes; he had to give up all active existence;⁠—for the old woman ferociously cut off his rations every time he broke an egg. So he...

“Now, doctor, a little cognac.” “With pleasure.” And the old naval doctor, holding out his little glass, watched the precious liquor rising to the brim, flecked with golden gleams. Then he lifted it t...

We were talking of lucky adventures and each of us had an odd happening to relate, delightful and unexpected encounters, in a railway carriage, in a hotel, abroad, on a seashore. Seashores, said Roger...

Slowly, slowly, over the heavy blue water, transparently, liquidly, blue, my boat, my dear little boat, all white with a blue border, was gliding through the blue light. The villas, the pretty white v...

A small leather-bound on the upholstered seat of the railway carriage. I took it up and opened it. It was a traveller’s diary, dropped by its owner. Here are the last three pages of it copied out. Feb...

My dear doctor: I am putting myself in your hands. Do with me as you please. I am going to tell you very frankly my strange state of mind, and you will decide whether it might not be better to have me...

In the office old Mongilet was looked upon as an eccentric. He was an old employee, a good-natured creature, who had never been outside Paris but once in his life. It was the end of July, and each of ...

I was walking with Roger one day when a street-hawker bawled in our ears: “New method of getting rid of mothers-in-law! Buy, oh buy!” I stopped, and said to my companion: “Now that reminds me of a que...

The sun was vanishing behind the vast chains of hills whose loftiest peak is the Puy de Dôme, and the shadow of the crests filled the deep valley of Royat. Several people were strolling in the park, r...

Every Sunday, as soon as they were off duty, the two little soldiers set out for a walk. On leaving the barracks, they turned to the right, crossed Courbevoie with quick strides as if they were marchi...

I was going to Turin by way of Corsica. At Nice I took ship for Bastia, and as soon as we were out at sea I saw a charming, quietly dressed young woman sitting on the bridge: she was looking out to se...

They were both tipsy, quite tipsy, the little Baroness Andrée de Fraisières and the little Comtesse Noëmi de Gardens. They had dined alone together in the many-windowed morning room looking out over t...

As the Count of Lormerin finished dressing he cast a parting glance at the large mirror which occupied a whole panel in his dressing-room, and smiled. He was really a fine-looking man, although quite ...

I will not record the name either of the country or of the man concerned. It was far, very far from this part of the world, on a fertile and scorching seacoast. All morning we had been following a coa...

The little Baroness de Grangerie was drowsing on her couch, when the little Marquise of Rennedon entered abruptly, looking very disturbed, her bodice a little rumpled, her hat a little on one side, an...

I had just taken possession of my room in the hotel⁠—a narrow slip between two papered partitions through which I could hear everything my neighbours were doing⁠—and was arranging my clothes in the wa...

He died a high-court judge, an upright magistrate whose irreproachable life was held up to honour in every court in France. Barristers, young puisne judges, judges, greeted with a low bow that marked ...

Before marriage, they had loved each other with a pure love, their heads in the stars. It had begun in a pleasant acquaintance made on a sea front. He had found her entirely charming, this young girl,...

The Havre stagecoach was just leaving Criquetot and all the passengers were waiting in the yard of the Commercial Hotel, kept by young Malandain, for their names to be called out. The coach was yellow...

My dearest, you ask me why I do not come back to Paris; you are amazed, and you are almost angry. The reason that I am going to offer will doubtless disgust you: Can a sportsman return to Paris at the...

Little Georges, on all fours on the path, was making sand castles. He shovelled the sand together with both hands, heaped it up into a pyramid, and planted a chestnut leaf on the top. His father, seat...

Parent lived alone, entirely alone. During the first few weeks following his separation, the strangeness of his new life prevented him from thinking much. He had resumed his bachelor life, his loafing...

I had alighted at Barvilles only because I had read in a guide (I don’t know which): “Fine gallery, two Rubenses, one Teniers, one Ribera.” So I thought: Let’s go and see it. I will dine at the Hôtel ...

The little Marquise de Rennedon burst into the room like a ball crashing through a window, and began to laugh before she had said a word; she laughed until she cried, just as she had laughed a month b...

The little Marquise de Rennedon burst into the room like a ball crashing through a window, and began to laugh before she had said a word; she laughed until she cried, just as she had laughed a month b...

“Three days later, a tall dark girl presented herself before me; she was very beautiful, with an expression at once demure and provocative, a strangely sophisticated expression. Her manner to me was c...

Médéric Rompel, postman, familiarly addressed as Méderi by the country folk, left the post office of Roüy-le-Tors at his usual hour. He passed through the little town with the long strides of an old c...

The investigations went on all summer: the criminal was not discovered. The men suspected and arrested were easily able to prove their innocence, and the police had to abandon their search for the gui...

It was yesterday, December the thirty-first. I had just lunched with my old friend, Georges Garin. The servant brought him a letter covered with seals and foreign stamps. “May I?” Georges asked. “Cert...

It really was an odd notion of mine to choose Mademoiselle Pearl for queen that particular evening. Every year I went to eat my Twelfth Night dinner at the house of my old friend Chantal. My father, w...

It really was an odd notion of mine to choose Mademoiselle Pearl for queen that particular evening. Every year I went to eat my Twelfth Night dinner at the house of my old friend Chantal. My father, w...

Well, this year, as in every other year, I had gone to dine at the Chantals’ to celebrate Epiphany. I embraced Monsieur Chantal, as I always did, Madame Chantal, and Mademoiselle Pearl, and I bowed de...

As soon as dinner was over, Chantal took me by the arm. It was the hour for his cigar, a sacred hour. When he was alone, he went out into the street to smoke; when he had someone to dinner, he took th...

Monsieur Chantal was silent. He was sitting on the billiard table, swinging his feet; his left hand fiddled with a ball and in his right hand he crumpled the woollen rag we called “the chalk rag,” and...

Together with some friends, we had been to see the old hermit living on an ancient tumulus, covered with great trees, in the midst of the vast plain that stretches from Cannes to La Napoule. On the wa...

Cape of Antibes. Seated on a bench, the other day at my door, in the full sunlight, with a cluster of anemones in flower before me, I read a book recently published, an honest book, something uncommon...

There certainly was in this affair an element of mystery which neither the jury, nor the president, nor the Attorney-General himself could understand. The girl Prudent (Rosalie), a maid employed by th...

I was sitting on the breakwater of the little harbour of Obernon, near the small town of la Salis, watching Antibes in the setting sun. I have never seen anything so startling or so lovely. The little...

I was sitting on the breakwater of the little harbour of Obernon, near the small town of la Salis, watching Antibes in the setting sun. I have never seen anything so startling or so lovely. The little...

Mme. Parisse, a young girl of the Combelombe family, had married, one year before the war of 1870, a Government official called M. Parisse. She was then a beautiful young girl, as slender and merry as...

The Marseilles train came into the station to the minute of nine o’clock, deposited two travellers on the platform and continued its journey to Nice. One was tall and thin, M. Saribe, oil merchant, th...

M. Martini had finished speaking. Mme. Parisse, her walk over, was returning. She passed near me, gravely, her eyes turned to the Alps whose peaks were rosy now in the last rays of the sun. I wanted t...

One spring two years ago I was tramping along the Mediterranean coast. Is there anything pleasanter than striding along a road, lost in dreams? You walk in a world full of light, through the caressing...

The little Marquise de Rennedon was still asleep, in the warm scented room, in her soft low wide bed, between her sheets of fine lawn, as fragile as love, as caressing as a kiss; she slept alone, peac...

The grey rainy sky seemed to press down on the vast brown plain. The scents of autumn, the melancholy scents of bare wet earth, fallen leaves and dead flowers, made the stagnant evening air duller and...

The grey rainy sky seemed to press down on the vast brown plain. The scents of autumn, the melancholy scents of bare wet earth, fallen leaves and dead flowers, made the stagnant evening air duller and...

The wedding took place towards the middle of December. It was a simple one, since the pair had not much money. Césaire, all in new clothes, was ready at eight in the morning to go and call for his bet...

That Sunday was a feast day in the village, the yearly feast of their patron saint, called in Normandy the Assemblée. For a week, strange vehicles were seen coming by every road, dragged along by grey...

I was on my way to revisit my friend Simon Radevin, whom I had not seen for fifteen years. Once he had been my best friend, the true guest of my mind, that friend with whom a man spends long evenings,...

The peasant faced the doctor across the dying woman’s bed. The old woman, calm, resigned, quite conscious, looked at the two men and listened to their words. She was going to die; she made no complain...

Mme. Chassel’s counsel began his speech: My Lord, gentlemen of the jury, the case which I am called on to defend before you would more suitably be treated by medicine than by justice and constitutes m...

Looking just like all the other wooden hostelries set down amid the High Alps, at the feet of the glaciers, in the bare and rocky corridors that cleave the white peaks of the mountains, the Schwarenba...

This question of Latin in our schools, with which we have been bored for some time, reminds me of a story, a story of my youth. I was finishing my school life with the proprietor of one of those board...

Inflicting blows and wounds sufficient to cause death. Such was the charge upon which master Léopold Renard, upholsterer, made his appearance at the Assizes. Present also were the chief witnesses, the...

Roger de Tourneville was talking, straddling a chair in the middle of a circle of his friends; he held a cigar in his hand and now and then took a pull at it and blew out a little cloud of smoke. … We...

The Baron René de Treilles said: “Won’t you come to my farm at Marinville for the first of the shooting? It would be a real pleasure. Besides, I shall be alone. The shooting is so difficult of access ...

I have received the following letter. Thinking that it may be of help to many of my readers, I hasten to make it known to them. Paris, November 15, 1886. Sir: In short stories or newspaper articles yo...

I have just read, in a news item, a Drama of Passion. He killed her, then he killed himself⁠—therefore he loved her. What do they matter, He and She? Their love alone has value; and it interests me no...

They are strange things, these old memories that haunt our minds and will not be dismissed. This is such an old one, so old that I cannot understand why it remains in my mind so vividly and so tenacio...

The Mayor was sitting down to breakfast when he was told that his village constable was waiting for him at the Town Hall with two prisoners. He went there immediately and found indeed old Hochedur, th...

For forty days he had been walking, seeking everywhere for work. He had left his own hometown, Ville-Avaray, in the Manche, because there was no work to be got there. A carpenter’s mate, twenty-seven ...

Jacques de Rayndal, having dined alone at home, told the manservant that he might go out, and settled down to write some letters. He always ended the year this way: alone, writing letters and dreaming...

Madmen fascinate me. These beings live in a mysterious land of fantastic dreams, in that impenetrable cloud of insanity where all that they have seen on earth, all that they have loved, all that they ...

“Ah!” said Captain the Comte de Garens, “I should think I do remember that Twelfth Night, during the war! “I was a quartermaster in the Hussars in those days, and for the past fortnight I’d been wande...

Sergeant-Major Varajou had got eight days’ leave to visit his sister, Mme. Padoie. Varajou, who was garrisoned at Rennes, and led a gay life there, finding himself penniless and in disgrace with his f...

“Ah!” exclaimed Karl Massouligny, “the question of complaisant husbands is a difficult one. I have seen many kinds, and yet I am unable to give an opinion about any of them. I have often tried to dete...

“You might see some interesting pieces there,” my friend Boisrené said. “Come with me.” He took me to the first floor of a beautiful house in one of the best streets in Paris. We were received by a ve...

May 8. What a glorious day! I have spent the whole morning lying on the grass in front of my house, under the enormous plane-tree that forms a complete covering, shelter and shade for it. I love this ...

I love night passionately. I love it as one loves one’s country or one’s mistress. I love it with all my senses, with my eyes which see it, with my sense of smell which inhales it, with my ears which ...

I had loved her to distraction. Why do we love? It is a strange thing to see in the whole world only one being, have in one’s mind only a single thought, a single desire in one’s heart, a single name ...

We had just passed through Gisors, where I had been awakened by hearing the name of the place shouted by the porters, and I was falling off to sleep again, when a frightful jerk threw me on top of the...

Jean de Valnoix is a friend of mine whom I visit from time to time. He lives in a little house in the woods at the edge of a river. He retired from Paris after leading a wild life for fifteen years. S...

At the usual time between five and a quarter past five in the morning, old Lecacheur appeared at the door of his house to watch his men start work. Red in the face and half asleep⁠—one eye open and th...

Crowded with officers, the cemetery looked like a field of flowers. Red caps and breeches, gold stripes and buttons, swords and the shoulder-knots of the staff officers, the gold lace of the Chasseurs...

As they were still speaking of Pranzini, M. Maloureau, who had been Attorney-General under the Empire, said: “I once knew a very curious affair, curious from many points of view, as you will see. “I w...

The guilty man was defended by a very young counsel; it was his first brief, and he spoke as follows: “The facts, gentlemen of the jury, are undeniable. My client, a respectable man, an employee witho...

While descending the main staircase of the club, heated to such an extent that it felt like a hothouse, Baron Mordiane left his fur-lined overcoat open; but when the front door had closed after him, t...

“What little beasts women are!” “What do you mean?” “Well, they have played me a dirty trick.” “You?” “Yes, me.” “Women have, or a woman has?” “Two women.” “Both at the same time?” “Yes.” “What was it...

Maître Bontran, the celebrated Parisian lawyer, who for ten years had pleaded and won all divorce actions brought by ill-assorted couples, opened the door of his consulting-room and drew back to admit...

Night hours in the train induce sleep in some and insomnia in others. With me, any journey prevents my sleeping on the following night. I had arrived, about five o’clock, at the estate of Abelle, whic...

He really was comic, old Pavilly, with his great spider legs, his little body, his long arms, and his pointed beard, surmounted by a flame of red hair on the top of his skull. He was a clown, a peasan...

Everyone in Fécamp knew the story of old Mother Patin. She had undoubtedly been unhappy with her man, had old Mother Patin; or her man had beaten her during his lifetime, as a man threshes wheat in hi...

Everyone in Fécamp knew the story of old Mother Patin. She had undoubtedly been unhappy with her man, had old Mother Patin; or her man had beaten her during his lifetime, as a man threshes wheat in hi...

One night when her man was at sea she was awakened by the noise like the growling of a beast which the wind makes when it gets up, like an unleashed hound. She sat up in bed, uneasy, then, hearing not...

This adventure happened to me about 1882. I had just settled myself in the corner of an empty carriage, and I had shut the door, in the hope of being left undisturbed, when it was abruptly reopened an...

“Look, there’s Milial,” said someone near me. I looked at the man they were pointing out, for I had long wanted to make the acquaintance of this Don Juan. He was no longer young. His grey hair, a shag...

In front of the building, half farmhouse, half manor house⁠—one of those semi-feudal country dwellings of mixed character now occupied by wealthy farmers⁠—the dogs chained to the apple trees in the co...

In front of the building, half farmhouse, half manor house⁠—one of those semi-feudal country dwellings of mixed character now occupied by wealthy farmers⁠—the dogs chained to the apple trees in the co...

He was buried on Tuesday, the shooting season having opened on Sunday. On returning home from the cemetery César Hautot spent the rest of the day weeping. He scarcely slept that night and felt so sad ...

The week seemed long to César Hautot. He had never felt so lonely, and the solitude seemed unbearable. Hitherto he had lived with his father, just like his shadow, following him to the fields and supe...

The steamer Kleber had stopped and I looked with pleasure at the beautiful Gulf of Bougie that spread out ahead of us. The Kabyle forests covered the high mountains; in the distance the yellow sand ed...

Old Antoine Boitelle’s speciality throughout the country was doing the dirty jobs. Whenever a cesspool had to be cleaned out, a manure heap removed, drains flushed, or any filthy old hole attended to,...

One of my friends had told me that if, during my travels in Algeria, I happened to be in the neighbourhood of Bordj-Ebbaba, I was to be sure to visit his old friend Auballe, who had settled down there...

One of my friends had told me that if, during my travels in Algeria, I happened to be in the neighbourhood of Bordj-Ebbaba, I was to be sure to visit his old friend Auballe, who had settled down there...

“For a month I was very happy with her, and in a queer fashion I became attached to this creature of another race, who seemed to me to be almost of another species, born on a neighbouring planet. “I d...

She had on her hat and coat with a black veil down to her nose and another in her pocket to put over the first as soon as she got into the offensive four-wheeler. She was tapping her boot with the poi...

Having left Havre on May 3, 1882, for a voyage in Chinese waters, the three-masted sailing-ship Notre-Dame-des-Vents reentered Marseilles harbour on August 8, 1886, after a four years’ voyage. She had...

Having left Havre on May 3, 1882, for a voyage in Chinese waters, the three-masted sailing-ship Notre-Dame-des-Vents reentered Marseilles harbour on August 8, 1886, after a four years’ voyage. She had...

The entertainment lacked nothing! For four hours the ten sailors took their fill of love and wine. Six months’ pay vanished on it. They were installed, lords of all they surveyed, in the big saloon, r...

There was a fancy-dress ball that evening at the Élysée-Montmartre. It was to celebrate Mid-Lent, and the crowd was pouring, like the water rushing over a weir, down the illuminated corridor that led ...

A pleasant couple the Bondels, though a little bellicose. They often quarrelled, from trivial causes, and then were reconciled. A retired tradesman who had given up business after amassing enough to l...

A pleasant couple the Bondels, though a little bellicose. They often quarrelled, from trivial causes, and then were reconciled. A retired tradesman who had given up business after amassing enough to l...

Bondel felt baffled, very ill at ease. That insolent provocative laughter had affected him like the sting of one of those venomous flies which we do not feel at first, but which very soon begin to sma...

He went at once to the station, took his ticket, climbed into a carriage and when he felt himself being swept along by the train which was running down hill at Pecq, he felt a stab of fear, a sort of ...

As usual that day at four o’clock Alexander brought the three-wheeled invalid carriage in which by the doctor’s orders he took his old, helpless mistress out until six o’clock every day, round to the ...

The Seine spread before my house without a wrinkle, varnished by the morning sun. It lay there, a lovely, wide, slow, long flood of silver, tarnished in places; and on the further side of the river a ...

He said to us: “What queer things and queer women I have seen in those long-ago days when I used to go on the river! Many a time I have longed to write a little book, called On the Seine, describing t...

When the shore-loafers of the small Provençal port of Garandou on the Bay of Pisca, between Marseilles and Toulon, caught sight of Abbé Vilbois’ boat coming back from fishing, they went down to the be...

When the shore-loafers of the small Provençal port of Garandou on the Bay of Pisca, between Marseilles and Toulon, caught sight of Abbé Vilbois’ boat coming back from fishing, they went down to the be...

The sailor who was with the priest felt the usual southern longing for a chat, but dared not begin, for the Abbé exercised great authority over his flock. At last he ventured: “So you are comfortable ...

When the plates were full, the tramp started to swallow his soup greedily in quick following spoonfuls. The Abbé was not hungry now, so he trifled with the delicious soup, leaving the bread at the bot...

A fashionable victoria, drawn by two magnificent black horses, stood at the doorstep of the mansion. It was about half past five on an evening towards the end of June, and between the gables which fen...

A fashionable victoria, drawn by two magnificent black horses, stood at the doorstep of the mansion. It was about half past five on an evening towards the end of June, and between the gables which fen...

Shut in her room, the Comtesse de Mascaret waited for her dinner hour as a condemned man waits for the hour of his execution. What would he do? Had he come in? Despotic and ungovernable as he was, rea...

It was at the Opéra, during an entr’acte of Robert le Diable. In the stalls, men stood up, hats on their heads, low-cut waistcoats revealing white shirts on which shone gold or jewelled studs, and loo...

Side by side in the brougham that took them back to their house after the performance at the Opéra, the Comte and Comtesse de Mascaret sat in silence. But suddenly the husband said to his wife: “Gabri...

My God! My God! So at last I am going to write down what has happened to me. But shall I be able to? Shall I dare?⁠—so fantastic, so inexplicable, so incomprehensible, so crazy is it. If I were not ce...

My God! My God! So at last I am going to write down what has happened to me. But shall I be able to? Shall I dare?⁠—so fantastic, so inexplicable, so incomprehensible, so crazy is it. If I were not ce...

I began by travelling in Italy. The sun did me good. For six months, I wandered from Genoa to Venice, Venice to Florence, Florence to Rome, Rome to Naples. Then I went over Sicily, a country alike not...

The five friends were finishing their dinner; there were two bachelors and three married men, all middle-aged and wealthy. They assembled thus once a month, in memory of old times, and after they had ...

“My dears, you must go to bed,” the Countess said. The three children, two girls and one boy, got up and kissed their grandmother, then went to say good night to the priest, who dined at the château e...

To our still young and inexperienced minds, how many fleeting associations, trifling things, chance meetings, humble dramas that we witness, guess at, or suspect, become as it were, guiding threads th...

A play on the words “Sceaux” (buckets) and “Sots” (fools). —⁠Translator’s Note ↩ Désabusé⁠—Dissillusioned. Des abusés⁠—Amongst the deluded. —⁠Translator’s note ↩ Oh, you have direful secrets, cruel wa...