Germinie Lacerteux

"Damnation! I imagined, from the way you acted with me, I thought you cared more for me than that--that you loved me, in fact!" exclaimed the painter, disconcerted by the terrib...

Jupillon stood for a moment motionless on the sidewalk, looking at the two napoleons in his hand. Then he ran after the cab, stopped it, and said to Germinie through the window:

From time to time the dance, in its twisting and turning, disclosed a soiled stocking, the typical Jewish features of a street pedlar of sponges, red fingers protruding from bla...

She did not go too far away, so that she might be at hand to nurse her brother if he were ill, and to see him and meet him sometimes. But there was a great void in her heart and...

One morning, after a night passed by her in turning over and over in her mind all her despairing, hate-ridden thoughts, Germinie went to the creamery for her four sous' worth of...

It had, indeed, sometimes occurred to mademoiselle in a vague way that her maid had some secret, something that she was concealing from her, something that was obscure in her li...

Three months had passed when she received news of her sister's death. The husband, who was one of the whining, lachrymose breed of mechanics, gave her in his letter, mingled wit...

It loves little indecent books, memoirs of courtesans, alcove confessions, erotic obscenity, the scandal tucked away in pictures in a bookseller's shop window: that which is con...

When, in her hours of discouragement, the bitter experiences of her past recurred to her memory, when she followed, from her infancy, the links in the chain of her deplorable ex...

A few days later Germinie learned through Adele that the husband of the cook who had been robbed said that there was no need to look very far; that the thief was in the house, a...

The above extracts are from our journal: JOURNAL DES GONCOURTS--_Memoires de la Vie Litteraire_; they are the documentary foundation upon which, two years later, my brother and...

They set out. Germinie was delighted. On their arrival she felt decidedly better. For some days her disease seemed to be diverted by the change. But the weather that summer was...

In order to be always there and to have the right to be always there, to make herself a part of the shop, to keep her eyes constantly upon the man she loved, to hover about him,...

Those people who look for the death of the Catholic religion in our day, do not realize by what an infinite number of sturdy roots it still retains its hold upon the hearts of t...

"Oh! I know very well," said Jupillon, when they were near the creamery, "my mother wasn't fair to you. You see, the woman has been too virtuous all her life. She don't know, sh...

She lifted her skirt and showed him her stockings, all full of holes and tied together with strings. "I haven't a change of anything. Money? Why, I didn't even have enough to gi...

She was so taken by surprise by this sudden fatal termination of the disease, that she could not accustom her mind to the thought. She could hardly realize that sudden, secret,...

How sad and bitter and lonely for her was her life with that morose, sour old man, who was always scolding and complaining at home, affable only in society, and who left her eve...

O Paris! thou art the heart of the world, thou art the great city of humanity, the great city of charity and brotherly love! Thou hast kindly intentions, old-fashioned habits of...