The Confession of a Child of the Century — Volume 2

I have now to recount what happened to my love, and the change that took place in me. What reason can I give for it? None, except as I repeat the story and as I say: "It is the...

I went to see her in the morning. I found her at the piano, her old aunt at the window sewing, the little room filled with flowers, the sunlight streaming through the blinds, a...

That evening I received from Madame Pierson a letter addressed to M. R. D., at Strasburg. Three weeks later my mission had been accomplished and I returned. During my absence I...

A kind of stagnant inertia, tempered with bitter joy, is characteristic of debauchery. It is the sequence of a life of caprice, where nothing is regulated according to the needs...

It was Mercanson who had repeated in the village and in the chateau my conversation with him about Dalens and the suspicions that, in spite of myself, I had allowed him clearly...

I found Brigitte much disturbed; her aunt was seriously ill; she had time for only a few words with me. I did not see her for an entire week; I knew that she had summoned a phys...

One evening, as I was walking under a row of lindens at the entrance to the village, I saw a young woman come from a house some distance from the road. She was dressed simply an...

But quarrel had been, so to speak, less sad than our reconciliation; it was attended, on Brigitte's part, by a mystery which frightened me at first and then planted in my soul t...

A little wooden railing surrounded my father's grave. According to his expressed wish, he was buried in the village cemetery. Every day I visited his tomb and passed part of the...

The fever kept me in bed a week. When I was able to write I assured Madame Pierson that she should be obeyed, and that I would go away. I wrote in good faith, without any intent...

If I were a jeweler and had in stock a pearl necklace that I wished to give a friend, it seems to me I should take great pleasure in placing it about her neck with my own hands;...

I entered, and saw my father dead. "Sir," I said to the physician, "please have everyone retire that I may be alone here; my father had something to say to me, and he will say it."