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A gentle lawyer accepts a retired Cossack’s hospitality and spends a sleepless night inside the old man’s brutal, self-satisfied world.
A wealthy princess seeks spiritual peace at a monastery, where a former employee challenges her cherished image of her own goodness.
During the Roman siege of Jerusalem, three temple officials pay the soldiers below for animals to use in sacrifice.
A mock scientific essay defines the perfect swindler and catalogs the small cons that make fraud look respectable.
A guide takes a modern visitor through ancient Antioch, where a violent king prepares an animal costume for his latest public triumph.
An ambitious literary society secretary asks a famous editor to teach her the formula for a fashionable tale of extreme sensation.
Toby Dammit's habit of betting the Devil his head becomes literal when a stranger accepts the wager at a covered bridge.
A proud entrepreneur explains the strict method behind a career built on nuisance, provocation, fraud, and other unusual trades.
A barber's son explains how plagiarism, paid praise, personal attacks, and business deals made him a national literary authority.
In a garden cluttered with bathtubs and boot jacks, a very busy God tries to keep order.
A writer reads a magazine’s promises of Romance while, far away, a famous bullfighter dies and is reduced to souvenir pictures.
A road trip through Italy becomes a tour of suspicious officials, theatrical hospitality, and the small absurdities of a country under Fascism.
A young Harvard poet and his older bride cross the Atlantic determined to begin a perfect marriage, but Europe has other distractions.
News of the Republic reaches a Norman village, where a self-important doctor turns national upheaval into a personal campaign for office.
Keeping vigil beside their revered mother, two austere children open the letters that preserve her private life.
After fifteen years apart, a Parisian visits an old friend and finds domestic contentment masking a disturbing family amusement.
When a timid civil servant’s elderly mother is declared dead, grief soon competes with inheritance, office protocol, and his wife’s practical schemes.
A childless couple’s expected inheritance comes with one condition, turning marital respectability into a desperate financial problem.
Two sheltered brothers discover Parisian freedom until their formidable priest uncle arrives at the worst possible hour.
A sharp-tongued rail traveler records the sights, absurdities, and unsettling stories encountered along the French Riviera.
A newlywed tells his oldest friend that marital passion is ruining his health, then finds an arrangement that restores him.
A celebrated cavalry officer returns from war expecting to reclaim his glamorous lover, only to confront a form of sacrifice he cannot understand.
A faithless husband grows jealous when his independent wife attracts attention, and she answers his renewed desire with a price.
Ten travelers flee occupied Rouen, but their escape stalls when a Prussian officer makes one passenger’s body the price of everyone’s freedom.
