A name you know. A mood you’re in. Ten minutes to yourself. Start anywhere.
The readership the story was written for.
A landowner’s annual hunting visit exposes a gamekeeper’s private crisis, then turns into a night of fire, flight, and irreversible violence.
An experienced aunt advises her unhappy niece on the fine art of giving a kiss without wearing out its power.
A wealthy friend’s will leaves a married couple arguing over whether reputation matters more than one million francs.
A Norman peasant explains how Saint Michel acquired the Devil’s rich farmland through bargains, crops, and local cunning.
An innkeeper buys a stubborn widow’s farm on a life annuity, then grows impatient when she remains stubbornly healthy.
A devoted widower pours all his love into the son his wife left behind, until an angry servant voices what the whole town knows.
Two homesick Breton soldiers share every Sunday—until a cowgirl’s kindness divides them.
A boastful old bachelor recalls his first society affair and the practical lesson he learned about privacy.
A fallen log prompts an old bachelor to explain how one dangerous evening ended a close friendship and settled his view of marriage.
During the Prussian occupation, an officer mistakes a grieving woman’s immobility for defiance and decides to punish her.
A pious aristocratic family races to secure a freethinking marquis's last rites before scandal can reach the newspapers.
A masked dancer collapses at a Paris ball, and the face beneath his disguise leads a doctor into a marriage shaped by vanity and endurance.
On a bright beach, a painter walks beside his disabled wife while a friend tells the harsh story behind their silent marriage.
A peasant clown leaves the hospital with a healed leg and twenty-five francs, then spends his reward on a hazardous return to pleasure.
A traveler visits a notorious countrywoman whose prosperity depends on the children society pays to stare at.
A shaved moustache sends a society woman from bedroom complaint to a memory of recognizing French soldiers among the dead.
A clerk’s dissatisfied wife borrows a glittering necklace for one night among the wealthy, then pays dearly when it vanishes.
During a police roundup in rainy Paris, a young prostitute tells a passerby how poverty, abuse, and the law narrowed her choices.
A farming couple schedule a funeral around the colza crop, but the dying old man refuses to cooperate with their practical plans.
A respected village priest receives a ragged visitor whose face and faded photograph reopen the betrayal that drove him into the Church.
After burying his young wife, a colonel returns home to a letter in which she explains the hidden coercion behind her death.
An opium dreamer explains why the imagined East offers him the peace and pleasure he cannot find in modern life.
A lonely woman adopts an orphan for love, then begins to fear the silent young man growing up inside her house.
A sheltered young wife befriends the woman named in an anonymous warning about her husband—and trusts them both.
