A name you know. A mood you’re in. Ten minutes to yourself. Start anywhere.
How quickly the story moves.
A peaceable French merchant endures a Prussian officer’s insults until one final humiliation forces him to fight.
On his wedding night, an ardent Norman sportsman must choose between his waiting bride and suspected poachers.
A provincial music lover enters a Paris artist’s studio expecting celebrities and finds himself drafted into a chaotic housewarming.
A rural assize tries two drunken men whose attempt to price a wife by volume turns marriage, commerce, and justice into grotesque comedy.
Two sheltered brothers discover Parisian freedom until their formidable priest uncle arrives at the worst possible hour.
A landowner recalls forcing his pregnant servant into a marriage arranged to protect his own name.
A doctor explains how a married woman, a dead lover, and an imminent homecoming demanded instant deception.
An eighty-six-year-old health fanatic studies every local death, determined to prove that caution can defeat old age.
A married woman’s secret meetings are repeatedly interrupted by the toddler who sleeps in the next room.
A schoolboy's joke links a lonely Latin master with a laundress and gives a lesson no classical text can provide.
A faithless husband grows jealous when his independent wife attracts attention, and she answers his renewed desire with a price.
A charming idler marries a wealthy Englishwoman and devises a careful scheme to preserve both his allowance and his affairs.
A lonely Parisian’s plan for a generous Christmas supper with a stranger develops an alarming complication before bedtime.
A farm girl’s pregnancy forces her hard-nosed mother to weigh family honor against the price of a weekly coach ride.
A rural court must decide whether an older woman can reclaim land from the young man she raised, supported, and expected never to leave.
A wealthy idler devotes himself to earning the red ribbon he has coveted since childhood, despite having done nothing to deserve it.
A trusted servant attacks his master for money, then becomes the most devoted nurse the wounded man could ask for.
Five bored men ask a doctor for a new pleasure, and his account of ether offers more temptation than warning.
A devoted hunter arrives late for the annual guillemot shoot carrying an obligation that tests the limits of his sporting priorities.
After four years at sea, a sailor returns to Marseille and meets a woman whose questions turn a night of celebration into dread.
Three protected schoolboys share a railway carriage with a woman whose sudden crisis defeats every adult precaution.
An aging Parisian couple's return to the woods of their courtship ends with an embarrassed appearance before the village mayor.
Two tipsy noblewomen trade secrets, and one boasts of turning a servant’s devotion into summer entertainment.
During a winter retreat, a resourceful French lieutenant risks his mission to carry a freezing young woman through enemy-held country.
