Category: Novels
Towards the end of the month of October 1829 a young man entered the Palais-Royal just as the gaming-houses opened, agreeably to the law which protects a passion by its very nature easily excisable. He mounted the staircase of one of the gambling hells distinguished by the num...
“What a disheartening scene for a lover! Here was a lonely woman, without friends or kin, without the religion of love, without faith in any affection. Yet however slightly she...
10. Chapter 10“How can I dare to describe the hues of fleeting emotions, the nothings beyond all price, the spoken accents that beggar language, the looks that hold more than all the wealth o...
17. Chapter 17The playgoers heard the bell ring, and left the greenroom to take their places again. Raphael and the old merchant separated. As he entered his box, the Marquis saw Foedora sitt...
7. Chapter 7“That evening fixes the date of a first observation of a physiological kind; to it I owe a kind of insight into certain mysteries of our double nature that I have since been ena...
12. Chapter 12“On him Foedora exercised spells and witcheries unheard of; she drew him into her power, and arranged her whole mysterious business with him; I was left out, I heard not a word...
8. Chapter 8“I lived for nearly three years in that way,” Raphael answered, with a kind of pride. “Let us reckon it out. Three sous for bread, two for milk, and three for cold meat, kept me...
14. Chapter 14“By the light of the street lamp I thought I saw tears in Pauline’s eyes, and I groaned. Moved perhaps by a common impulse, we parted in haste like people who fear the contagion...
22. Chapter 22Confused voices interrupted Raphael at this point. All the time that he was speaking, the Marquis had kept his intolerably keen gaze fixed upon his antagonist; now he drew himse...
11. Chapter 11“I found myself alone under my roof, and laid myself down in my misery. My unhappy imagination suggested numberless baseless projects, and prescribed impossible resolutions. Whe...
6. Chapter 6“Yes,” she answered. “Just as a pope takes a new name when he is exalted above all other men, I, too, took another name when I raised myself above women’s level.”
21. Chapter 21Pity came over him, first of all, at this aspect of mankind, but very soon he shuddered at the thought of the power that came thus, at will, and flung aside for him the veil of...
16. Chapter 16“Then he rises and dresses himself. I have to give him his dressing-gown, and it is always after the same pattern, and of the same material. I am obliged to replace it when it c...
3. Chapter 3With two strokes of the brush a painter could have so altered the expression of this face, that what had been a serene representation of the Eternal Father should change to the...
19. Chapter 19“Substance is finite,” the mathematician put in, “and therefore will not admit of indefinite expansion, but pressure will necessarily increase the extent of surface at the expen...
23. Chapter 23The Auvergne peasant herself suddenly appeared before him like a shadow in the dusk; a perverse freak of the poet within him found a vague resemblance between her black and whit...
18. Chapter 18One morning towards the end of February, at the time when the brightening days bring a belief in the nearness of the joys of spring, Pauline and Raphael were breakfasting togeth...
1. Chapter 1Towards the end of the month of October 1829 a young man entered the Palais-Royal just as the gaming-houses opened, agreeably to the law which protects a passion by its very nat...
4. Chapter 4“We really regretted you,” said his friend, still pursuing his theme. “It was a question of a plan in which we included you as a superior person, that is to say, somebody who ca...
20. Chapter 20“And to mine, too,” she answered. “I cried in the night while I watched you sleeping, but not with happiness. Raphael, dear, pray listen to me. Your breathing is labored while y...
2. Chapter 2Fitful gleams of light gave a foreboding look to Paris; like a pretty woman, the city has mysterious fits of ugliness or beauty. So the outer world seemed to be in a plot to ste...
9. Chapter 9“Until last winter I led the uneventful studious life of which I have given you some faint picture. In the earliest days of December 1829, I came across Rastignac, who, in spite...
5. Chapter 5“Glory is a poor bargain; you buy it dear, and it will not keep. Does not the egotism of the great take the form of glory, just as for nobodies it is their own well-being?”
15. Chapter 15“My life has been silent too long. I mean to have my revenge now on the world at large. I will not amuse myself by squandering paltry five-franc pieces; I will reproduce and sum...
24. Chapter 24Navarreins, Duc de A Bachelor’s Establishment Colonel Chabert The Muse of the Department The Thirteen Jealousies of a Country Town The Peasantry Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life T...