Very woman (Sixtine)

He had a fair skin and a savage mustache, his beard cut like the Austrians, an animal jaw, beatified eyes; the air of needing plenty of meat and plenty of tenderness. His skull...

"In this so lightly tilled field, where the corn has been so hurriedly sown," Entragues told himself, "I reap nothing but problems, tares, weeds, ridiculous rank grasses! For th...

"She is sulking," he thought. "So much the better. Her anger will exhaust itself against my shadow and, when she condescends to receive me, her beautiful face will be free of al...

More than two weeks had passed since the feverish and mysterious evening which Sixtine granted to Entragues. Three times he had tried to see her, three times he had failed: irri...

"Ah! you would like to have the cards stacked. You do not wish to waste your time? At first, not any more than yourself, Monsieur Moscowitch never asked more than the pleasure o...

A prisoner in her abbatial seat, she had quite the air of a fourteenth century person. Dressed in red, her feet rested on a black cushion; her fingers, lit with garnets and opal...

No sooner was he in Sixtine's presence than Hubert felt his pleasure spoiled by the questionings which an algebraic schema had laid down but had not solved. So his will to act w...

"And to get rid of him?" Fortier questioned. "But Renaudeau does not permit himself to be overreached. Besides, we shall see, for he has left me a copy: '_The Voluntary Expiatio...

"What a painful evening!" thought Hubert, after returning to his home. "What nonsense I have had to think, what platitudes to hear, what stupid remarks to bray? And in what a la...

They were slightly acquainted already. They remembered having met during the past winter in the Marigny Avenue Salon, that haunt of miscarried glories, and, during the past week...

Hubert gladly mingled in the conversations, dances, scandals, the many (rather charming) frivolities which took place from eleven o'clock in the evening until six o'clock in the...

Hubert had no desire whatever to think, but it is not given to all persons to be able to regulate cerebral activity and to dismiss the serious affairs until the morrow. Neither...

The night entered through the loophole--the end of a day of horror. He had been forgotten; he had not been given his daily walk. Perhaps he was going to perish here, without see...

"Ah! yes," mused Hubert, as he replaced the book in the corner restricted to philosophers, "the pages of Ribot's positive and disenchanting psychology make good reading at a mom...

It was the maid who made inquiries. She knew nothing, did not understand. Madame had certainly returned, but the bed had not been used, only rumpled, as if she had lain upon it...

Once in the street, Hubert saw the ardent eyes of an invisible spectre glaring at him through the gloom--two terrible, imperious and inciting eyes. He recognized them and an opp...

"And when you will be thus formed, when you will be imbued with this truth, 'there is no truth, nothing truly existent for you except what your fertile mind gives,' observe the...

"In laying down his Cogito ergo sum as the only certainty, and in considering the world's existence as problematical, Descartes found the essential departing point of all philos...

"Good," Entragues said, as he heard the bell ring. "It is the Russian angel... Ah! I have written a fine blasphemy! '... in his arms.' And to think that for want of understandin...

"Besides, here is the spring, it will enliven me. You will see," said the actor, with a malicious smile. "You will see. I do not detest the country, once in a while. It inspires...

All afternoon he preserved the illusion of walking in her company. She suddenly appeared in a dress of changing colors: the cloth, a light and pale green silk, had golden clasps...

"Aria Serena, guand'apar l'albore E bianca neve scender senza vento ... Ció passa la beltate ... De la mia donna ... ... Non po' 'maginare Ch'om d'esto monde l'ardisca amirare ....

_Château de Rabodanges, in the portrait chamber, September 12_.--Upon arriving, I was received by Henri de Fortier, director of _la Revue spéculative_, and Michel Paysant, whose...

Nice, Friday. ADIEU. This will be a novel without an end, after the modern fashion, for you surely will write it? If not, what is the use? And thus the fugitive shadow will paus...

When Azélia presented herself the next morning, her face bearing the marks of tears and trouble, for "she was now sure that Madame had been murdered; never had Madame gone away...

Entragues, endowed with a deductive mind, liked to find his bearings--to know what he was about. To recall the past, confront it with the present, determine the resultant of the...

"Good day, Entragues. You received my note and you are bringing me some copy. Now that we come out every fortnight, I am going to be very hungry, I warn you."

At the corner of the fire-place, in the cool chamber, they were talking affectingly, for it was the hour when their closed lips, with a tacit agreement, were opening the door to...

Entragues wrote only in the morning, but often extended his work of the forenoon into the afternoon. When he did not feel lucid enough for the logic of prose, he amused himself....

"Il y a un secret, Valérien, que je veux le dire; j' ai pour amant un ange de Dieu, qui, avec une extrême jalousie, veille sur mon corps." Bréviare romain, _Office de sainte Céc...

He rose late, enjoying, through the window whose curtains were lifted, the wintry charm of a pale noon sun, and delighting in the state of half-consciousness which follows, afte...

"Ni vers, ni prose; points de grands mots, point de brillans, point de rimes: un ton naïf m'accomode mieux; en un mot, un récits sans façon et comme on parle." Madame d'Aulnay,...

"Muchas vezes, Senor mio, considero que si con algo se puede sustentar el virvir sin vos, es en la soledad, porque descansa el alma con su descanso." Sainte Theresa, _Exclamatio...

First of all, principles: Men lie and women deceive. There are but two motives to human acts--lucre and lust. All women with pleasant faces conceal objectionable defects. Men wh...

"My lord, my lord, hush! listen!" exclaimed Veltro during the ascent of the tower's staircase. "But do not betray me! I believe they are interceding for you, for the affair was...

Hubert had left Rabodanges a few days after Sixtine's departure. The unvaried green of the fields saddened him and, despite the ingenuity of the countess, deprived of the compan...

Scraps of conversation of the preceding evening returned to his memory after he left. The approaching pleasure of the promised evening led his thoughts to the theater, and he me...

That evening, Hubert had had the courage to return to his home, to undress, to go to bed, to fall asleep, without admitting the intrusion, in his consciousness, of any thought....

"Together, our souls thrilled at the return of the primordial splendor; noons have not blinded us, for we have slept, during the heat of the day, in the shadow of our love: our...

"Well, whatever you wish, but I love you. Close your eyes, I am inviolate and I feel myself blush. What will you think of me? Alas! it is really true that no one has ever implor...