The disciple

I DEDICATE this book to you, my young countryman, with whom I am so well acquainted, although I may not know your place of birth, your name, your parents, your fortune or your a...

This _concierge_--according to the use and custom of all such functionaries in small apartment houses--increased the revenue of his lodgings by working at a trade. He was a shoe...

This work of almost sixty pages revealed an intellect so prematurely subtle, an acquaintance so exact with the most recent theories of contemporaneous psychology, and finally su...

“That is very simple, however,” replied the judge. “However grave the charges against Robert Greslon may be they rest upon certain hypotheses. There are terrible presumptions ag...

Four o’clock struck when this singular dreamer, who no more suspected his own ferocity than does a physician who is charmed by a beautiful autopsy, arrived in front of his house...

“I see distinctly at the present time that the crisis from which I suffer has for its factors, first my heredities, then the medium of ideas in which I was educated, finally the...

The impression of the celebrated writer offered a startling analogy with the effect which this fragment of conversation produced upon me. It was very true that I never spoke of...

These pages were sufficient to make me appreciate the absolute difference of inspiration between the modern and the ancient masters, as one can appreciate the difference of arom...

“Well, my poor Limasset, when are you coming down to see us? The air is excellent down there. That is what I need. I cannot breathe in Paris. We never breathe enough. I hope, mo...

This discourse, which I believe I have faithfully reproduced, did not at all astonish me. It was quite natural in a house in which the father was an old monomaniac, the mother a...

“No one has done anything to me,” I answered, shaking my head; “but it is true,” I added, “that I have reasons for being sad, very sad, to-day. It is the anniversary of a great...

The failure of my attempt to win her love had made me more cruel, in proportion to the admiration I had before felt for the innocent grace of this child. To confess all, I began...

When I read over the pages of my journal, now destroyed, in which I had noted my sensations, I am astonished to see with what force the sources of ingenuousness were reopened in...

What could I do if she were not there? The vision of my weakness rose up so strong, so painful, that it excited my nervous system so profoundly that I neither ate nor slept unti...

Sometimes, in spite of the reassuring words of the doctors, he became so uneasy about his son that he passed the night in watching him. Sometimes he was seized with the fear of...

Charlotte had placed her head on my breast and she fell asleep, exhausted by the excess of her emotions. I looked at her and I felt, without knowing how, that I fell back from m...

Tell me that I am not a monster, that there are no monsters, that you will, if I emerge from this supreme crisis, have me for your disciple, your friend. If you were a physician...

To change anything in the mind would be to stop life. Ah! If the mechanism could only modify its own wheels and their movement! But if the watchmaker take the watch to pieces an...

In a quarter of an hour he was dressed and left the hotel. One detail made the brave Pourat shiver. He stated that the officer took his revolver with him which had been placed f...