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A drunken father asks his patient son for money, then confesses every lie without finding the strength to stop repeating them.
A driver recalls how his little sister carried a village’s money through a forest after robbers attacked their father.
After a ball, a wealthy manufacturer drinks through the night and confesses that money has made every relationship feel bought.
A ticket inspector vows to reform, but each attempt to perform his duty only makes a sick passenger’s night worse.
A sick Moscow waiter returns with his wife and daughter to the village he remembers, only to find a family trapped by poverty, drink, and fear.
Driving his gravely ill wife through a blizzard, a drunken turner discovers remorse only when time is almost gone.
A lawyer catches a beggar lying, offers him work, and assumes stern advice is enough to restore a life.
A widow’s annual temperance luncheon drives her respectable guests to increasingly elaborate errands.
While showing an architect a condemned tenement, a landlord recalls how one family’s ordinary poverty became a rapid descent.
A condemned man traces his ruin through alcohol, cruelty, and two black cats that seem to expose every crime he hides.
A failing advance man hides beneath a hotel sheet while alcohol and drugs turn his last escape into a grotesque pursuit he cannot outrun.
A road trip through Normandy leads to a chapel keeper who sells homemade saints and measures his drunkenness by degrees.
Five bored men ask a doctor for a new pleasure, and his account of ether offers more temptation than warning.
A boisterous sergeant seeking nightlife in a quiet Breton town follows one wrong turn into a social disaster.
A doctor’s attempt to protect a newborn at a Breton christening collides with custom, cold, and drink.
On a storm-lashed Norman night, a fisherman’s friend keeps filling his glass while someone waits at the drunkard’s home.
An innkeeper buys a stubborn widow’s farm on a life annuity, then grows impatient when she remains stubbornly healthy.
A peasant clown leaves the hospital with a healed leg and twenty-five francs, then spends his reward on a hazardous return to pleasure.
An opium dreamer explains why the imagined East offers him the peace and pleasure he cannot find in modern life.
A chance meeting in a beer hall reveals why a once-privileged schoolmate has spent his adult life drinking at the same table.
After clashing with his boss, a Dublin clerk looks to an evening of drinking to restore his pride.
After a drunken fall, a salesman’s friends try to guide him back toward the church.
A traveler finds an old acquaintance trapped in an abusive marriage in a remote Louisiana cabin.
An aging, disgraced navigator claims he can guide a vital supply ship through an asteroid belt after its computers fail.
