A name you know. A mood you’re in. Ten minutes to yourself. Start anywhere.
How the prose reads.
A doctor’s defense of a desperate mother leads him to recount a widow’s struggle with pregnancy and public shame.
A lonely Parisian seeking company for the night hears a noise behind a hidden door in a sex worker’s rented room.
An austere officer returns from maneuvers burdened by one lapse and insists on confessing it to his far more worldly wife.
A would-be lover accepts a suspiciously welcoming husband's invitation and discovers a precise defense against adultery.
A reclusive count explains why a traveling mother, her daughter, and a different grateful companion visit him every July.
A visitor wins the trust of a hermit whose retreat on a southern hill began with one devastating discovery in Paris.
An upholsterer explains how a cherished fishing spot, two furious wives, and one unlucky punch brought him before a jury.
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 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.
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.
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 shaved moustache sends a society woman from bedroom complaint to a memory of recognizing French soldiers among the dead.
During a police roundup in rainy Paris, a young prostitute tells a passerby how poverty, abuse, and the law narrowed her choices.
A newly appointed State Councillor scatters favors across Paris until one generous recommendation threatens his carefully polished importance.
A late-night walk with a nervous pedlar leads a young oarsman into a poor household where each sound suggests the wrong kind of danger.
A newspaper’s suicide statistics carry a riverside reader into a dream of a Paris institution that promises a quiet, respectable death.
A stolen farm rabbit sends two pleased policemen after a suspect whose hiding place exposes more than one rural offense.
A surgeon’s false tale about a stolen saint’s relic impresses his devout fiancée—until she visits Cologne herself.
On her way to a lover’s apartment, a Parisian society wife discovers that habit can exhaust even the most forbidden affair.
A divorced man meets his remarried former wife at a hotel and turns their old grievances into a calculated new proposal.
