The Project Gutenberg EBook of Marie Claire, by Marguerite Audoux

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Title: Marie Claire

Author: Marguerite Audoux

Translator: John N. Raphael

Release Date: February 12, 2007 [EBook #20572]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MARIE CLAIRE ***

Produced by Al Haines

[Frontispiece: Marguerite Audoux]

MARIE CLAIRE

BY

MARGUERITE AUDOUX

TRANSLATED BY

JOHN N. RAPHAEL

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY

ARNOLD BENNETT

AND AN AFTERWORD BY THE TRANSLATOR

LONDON

G. BELL & SONS, LTD.

1911

_This Edition is intended for circulation only in India, and the
British Colonies_

PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED,
LONDON AND BECCLES.

INTRODUCTION

The origins of this extraordinary book are sufficiently curious and
sufficiently interesting to be stated in detail. They go back to some
ten years ago, when the author, after the rustic adventures which she
describes in the following pages, had definitely settled in Paris as a
working sempstress. The existence of a working sempstress in Paris, as
elsewhere, is very hard; it usually means eleven hours' close
application a day, six full days a week, at half a crown a day. But
already Marguerite Audoux's defective eyesight was causing anxiety, and
upsetting the regularity of her work, so that in the evenings she was
often less fatigued than a sempstress generally is. She wanted
distraction, and she found it in the realization of an old desire to
write. She wrote, not because she could find nothing else to do, but
because at last the chance of writing had come. That she had always
loved reading is plain from certain incidents in this present book; her
opportunities for reading, however, had been limited. She now began,
in a tentative and perhaps desultory fashion, to set down her youthful
reminiscences. About this time she became acquainted, through one of
its members, and by one of those hazards of destiny which too rarely
diversify the dull industrial life of a city, with a circle of young
literary men, of whom possibly the most important was the regretted
Charle