Afloat (Sur l'eau)

_This Diary contains no story and no very thrilling adventure. While cruising about on the coasts of the Mediterranean last Spring, I amused myself by writing down every day wha...

What relentless struggles, struggles in which every possible ruse is employed in order to have at one's table, at least once during the season, a Prince, a real Prince, one of t...

Thereupon, every day some toys for the little ones were brought into the fortress, amongst others an entire set of appliances for drawing-room gymnastics. Out of these toys was...

My neighbours, who had eaten very rapidly, soon left. As for me, I dawdled about looking at the slight crescent of the moon, shedding its soft rays over the little roadstead. At...

She lay panting, with emaciated cheeks, glistening eyes, and tangled hair, a pitiable sight. At each breath, deep hollows could be seen in her thin strained neck. Stretched out...

What I say about crowds, must be applied to all society, and he who would carefully preserve the absolute integrity of his thought, the proud independence of his opinion, and lo...

They were commercial travellers. They talked on every subject with assurance, with contempt, in an airy, chaffing authoritative manner, and they gave me the clearest, the sharpe...

She had, however, become a peasant herself. In the depths of this wilderness, she had become perfectly accustomed to this life without luxuries, without charm, or delicacy of an...

Around the tables, a motley crowd of players, the scum of every continent and of every society; mixed with princes, or future kings, women of fashion, _bourgeois,_ money lenders...