Long ago, and far from here, in a country with a name too hard to pronounce, there lived a little boy named Jean. In many ways, he was just like the boys here, for there are many Johns over here, are there not? Then too, Jean lived with his auntie, and some of our boys […]

I. I was at one time employed in a government office. Every day from ten o’clock until four I became a voluntary prisoner in a depressing office, adorned with yellow pasteboard boxes, and filled with the musty odor of old papers. There I lunched on Italian cheese and apples which I roasted at the grate. […]

When the maitre d’hotel–oh, what a respectable paunch in an ample kerseymere vest! What a worthy and red face, well framed by white whiskers! (an English physique, I assure you)–when the imposing maitre d’hotel opened with two raps the door of the salon, and announced in his musical bass voice, at the same time sonorous […]

He was scarcely ten years old when he was first arrested as a vagabond. He spoke thus to the judge: “I am called Jean Francois Leturc, and for six months I was with the man who sings and plays upon a cord of catgut between the lanterns at the Place de la Bastille. I sang […]

I. Sitting in her office at the end of the shop, shut off from it by glass windows, pretty Madame Bayard, in a black gown and with her hair in sober braids, was writing steadily in an enormous ledger with leather corners, while her husband, following his morning custom, stopped at the door to scold […]

Once upon a time–it was so long ago that the whole world has forgotten the date–in a city in the north of Europe–whose name is so difficult to pronounce that nobody remembers it–once upon a time there was a little boy of seven, named Wolff, an orphan in charge of an old aunt who was […]

[Translated by J. Matthewman] On that morning, which was the morning before Christmas, two important events happened simultaneously–the sun rose, and so did M. Jean-Baptiste Godefroy. Unquestionably the sun, illuminating suddenly the whole of Paris with its morning rays, is an old friend regarded with affection by everybody, It is particularly welcome after a fortnight […]

I. It is of no importance, the name of the little provincial city where Captain Mercadier–twenty-six years of service, twenty-two campaigns, and three wounds–installed himself when he was retired on a pension. It was quite like all those other little villages which solicit without obtaining it a branch of the railway; just as if it […]

I knew the poet Louis Miraz very well, in the old times in the Latin Quarter, where we used to take our meals together at a cremerie on the Rue de Seine, kept by an old Polish woman whom we nicknamed the Princess Chocolawska, on account of the enormous bowl of creme and chocolate which […]

The night was clear and glittering with stars, and there was a crowd upon the market-place. They crowded in gaping delight around the tent of some strolling acrobats, where red and smoking lanterns lighted the performance which was just beginning. Rolling their muscular limbs in dirty wraps, and decorated from head to foot with tawdry […]

For twenty-five years he had played the role of the villain at the Boulevard du Crime,[A] and his harsh voice, his nose like an eagle’s beak, his eye with its savage glitter, had made him a good player of such parts. For twenty-five years, dressed in the cloak and encircled by the fawn-colored leather belt […]

The young Due de Hardimont happened to be at Aix in Savoy, whose waters he hoped would benefit his famous mare, Perichole, who had become wind-broken since the cold she had caught at the last Derby,–and was finishing his breakfast while glancing over the morning paper, when he read the news of the disastrous engagement […]