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A peaceable French merchant endures a Prussian officer’s insults until one final humiliation forces him to fight.
A reluctant officer accepts a respectable woman’s devotion and finds that her passion will not permit an easy retreat.
A celebrated cavalry officer returns from war expecting to reclaim his glamorous lover, only to confront a form of sacrifice he cannot understand.
A wealthy idler devotes himself to earning the red ribbon he has coveted since childhood, despite having done nothing to deserve it.
A traveler joins a sparsely attended funeral and learns how a town punished a woman for the violence done to her as a child.
A provincial town crowns its shyest young man as a model of virtue, then watches its solemn civic experiment take an unruly turn.
A forester’s fearless daughter faces six lost Prussian soldiers alone in a snowbound forest house.
A society observer explains why a fashionable countess is said to have killed her daughter without committing a crime.
A drunken wrong turn at a country wedding leaves a determined bachelor facing a second ceremony he never planned.
Bullied because he has no father, a village boy asks a kindly blacksmith to give him a name his classmates cannot mock.
A shopkeeper’s unwanted kiss becomes a scandal, and the charming friend sent to repair it proves no model of restraint.
A lavish wedding breakfast paid for by an estranged daughter turns awkward when the groom chooses the wrong song.
After forty years of silence, an aging woman walks across Normandy to see the son she was forced to surrender after a secret affair.
A doctor’s defense of a desperate mother leads him to recount a widow’s struggle with pregnancy and public shame.
After burying a man celebrated for his honesty, his children open a private confession that forces them to choose between truth and family honor.
A pious aristocratic family races to secure a freethinking marquis's last rites before scandal can reach the newspapers.
After burying his young wife, a colonel returns home to a letter in which she explains the hidden coercion behind her death.
A frugal Norman peasant picks up a scrap of string on market day and finds that a harmless act can destroy a man’s reputation.
A hunter’s letter about woodcock season turns to a rural killing and the local idea of honor that judged it.
A terrified Prussian straggler searches occupied Normandy for the safest possible enemy: someone willing to take him prisoner.
A poor scholarship student makes one accidental movement during an exam and must decide whether winning matters more than his principles.
The timid inventor of a working flying machine becomes a public hero—and discovers that everyone expects him to risk the first flight.
A captive fur trader claims he can make his skin resist an axe, then wagers his life on a test.
A mother manages her daughter’s concert engagement and presses the organizers to honor their contract.
