The Grip of Desire: The Story of a Parish-Priest

But to love long, to make of the woman the aim of our life, the spring of our actions, the ideal of our existence; to believe in happiness together, to put faith in these fragil...

My father, as I have told you, was beadle at Saint Eprive's, and my mother was servant to Monsieur le Curé. These were two good situations, but they had a number of children, an...

And when the fever seized him, when he was burning with all the flames which the fiery _simoom_ of passion breathed on him, and he felt the frenzy taking possession of his pillo...

He saw again her face, lighted up by amorous fever, her fiery lecherous look, fastening on him with all the wild fury of her forty-five years, with the cynicism of the sham sain...

An honourable man and brutally frank like many old soldiers he had kept in private life the tone and ways of barracks and camps. As he said himself, he did not mince the truth t...

He. Who is he? He is the imaginary lover, the handsome young man whom she has met in the street, he who turned round to look at her, or the one who was so charming at the last b...

That departure, which he had so eagerly desired before, and the hope of which he had clung to as one lays hold of a means of safety, he could not think of without grief, when he...

Attracted towards Marcel by his sympathetic beauty, by his sweet and unctuous voice, and especially by the vague sorrow displayed on his countenance, perhaps still more by the o...

He lost his presence of mind, his will wavered and sank in the molten lava of his desires; he lost perception of his surroundings, of all those formidable things which until the...

--The fact is, replied Marcel, that I have reflected to-night; and, after well considering everything, I am perfectly well off, and have no desire to go away to be worse off els...

--You don't know, ah, ah. We are going to see first, if you are modest. Come close to me; see, little girl, give me your chin, and this pretty little dimple.... Oh, oh! you are...

The idealization of woman has therefore, besides other faults, that of causing as to take a dislike to our ordinary companions. How, indeed, after being present at the devotion...

--Is it possible? Really! you are a Catholic and you keep some pie for your meals on a fast-day, on a Friday! A Friday! he repeated with an accent of the deepest indignation: ha...

Marcel saw himself again at the little seminary of Pont-à-Mousson, on the benches, all blackened with ink, of the school-room, studying with ardour the _Epitome_ or the _De Viri...

--In order to protest aloud against a rule which he did not approve. In our days there are so many cowardly and degenerate characters, that we cannot too greatly admire those wh...

Although his life as priest had been spotless up to then, his brethren held aloof from him, for there was a bad mark against him at the Bishop's Palace. It had been attached at...

He heard the sound of a voice at some distance, a fresh, gay, melodious voice, to which a deeper note was answering. Spring, youth and love were mingling their accents together....

As he expected, the pretty girl was there, and seen from this distance in the night, half-lighted by a few smoky lamps, with her little bodice of velvet, her gauze skirt spangle...

"Here is salvation," said Marcel to himself, "the solution of the problem, the end of my misery and shame, the blow which severs this infernal knot which enfolds me and was abou...

This file was produced by Carlo Traverso, Relka Bihari, Andrea Ball, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team from images generously made available by the...

He who had just poured forth his bitterness upon woman and upon love, had be come to the conclusion in the presence of this stranger that he could not do without woman or withou...