As we sat chatting after dinner, a party of men, the conversation turned on women, for lack of something else. One of us said: “Here’s a funny thing that happened to me on, that very subject.” And he told us the following story: One evening last winter I suddenly felt overcome by that overpowering sense […]

The north wind was blowing a hurricane, driving through the sky big, black, heavy clouds from which the rain poured down on the earth with terrific violence. A high sea was raging and dashing its huge, slow, foamy waves along the coast with the rumbling sound of thunder. The waves followed each other close, rolling […]

“Upon my word,” said Colonel Laporte, “although I am old and gouty, my legs as stiff as two pieces of wood, yet if a pretty woman were to tell me to go through the eye of a needle, I believe I should take a jump at it, like a clown through a hoop. I shall […]

Fifteen years had passed since I was at Virelogne. I returned there in the autumn to shoot with my friend Serval, who had at last rebuilt his chateau, which the Prussians had destroyed. I loved that district. It is one of those delightful spots which have a sensuous charm for the eyes. You love it […]

I should say I did remember that Epiphany supper during the war! exclaimed Count de Garens, an army captain. I was quartermaster of cavalry at the time, and for a fortnight had been scouting in front of the German advance guard. The evening before we had cut down a few Uhlans and had lost three […]

CHATEAU DE SOLLES, 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. How stupid they are, my dear, these drawing entertainments in the repertory of real life! All is forced, coarse, heavy. […]

The first thing I did was to look at the clock as I entered the waiting- room of the station at Loubain, and I found that I had to wait two hours and ten minutes for the Paris express. I had walked twenty miles and felt suddenly tired. Not seeing anything on the station walls […]

This subject of Latin that has been dinned into our ears for some time past recalls to my mind a story–a story of my youth. I was finishing my studies with a teacher, in a big central town, at the Institution Robineau, celebrated through the entire province for the special attention paid there to the […]

The seventeenth of July, one thousand eight hundred and eighty-three, at half-past two in the morning, the watchman in the cemetery of Besiers, who lived in a small cottage on the edge of this field of the dead, was awakened by the barking of his dog, which was shut up in the kitchen. Going down […]

On the morning of July 8th, I received the following telegram: “Fine day. Always my predictions. Belgian frontier. Baggage and servants left at noon at the social session. Beginning of manoeuvres at three. So I will wait for you at the works from five o’clock on. Jovis.” At five o’clock sharp I entered the gas […]

Monsieur Lantin had met the young girl at a reception at the house of the second head of his department, and had fallen head over heels in love with her. She was the daughter of a provincial tax collector, who had been dead several years. She and her mother came to live in Paris, where […]

She was one of those pretty and charming girls who are sometimes, as if by a mistake of destiny, born in a family of clerks. She had no dowry, no expectations, no means of being known, understood, loved, wedded, by any rich and distinguished man; and she let herself be married to a little clerk […]